


Temps Perdu

by ELG



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 130,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this version of events, the Senior Partners unleashed the apocalypse before Angel had a chance to assassinate the Order of the Black Thorn. To prevent the destruction of LA, Wesley threw himself into a demon dimension and Angel went after him. After weeks of anxiety and spellcasting, the remnants of Angel Investigations and the visiting Scoobies attempt to bring them back.<br/><em>Pairings past and present mentioned (often quite fleetingly) in this fic</em>: Angel/Buffy, Angel/Cordelia, Angelus/Spike, Wesley/Cordelia, Wesley/Lilah, Wesley/Fred, Gunn/Fred, Gunn/Wesley implications, Willow/Kennedy, Xander/Anya, Giles/Jenny, Giles/Joyce, Spike/Buffy. However, only Angel and Wesley actually nakedly share a bed and they waste the opportunity. (The fools!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rupert Giles was starting to feel as if he were wasting his time. As if they were all wasting their time in fact. The hotel was…unnerving. A strange old building, it was full of inexplicable creaks, although apparently – he had been blithely assured – no longer haunted. He wasn’t even sure why he was here; why any of them were here except for Buffy. The two people they were here to help had not exactly been bosom pals of his; in fact one of them had tortured him and murdered the woman he loved and the other had stolen his job. Moreover Angel had made it impossible for Buffy to see Xander as a romantic interest at the time when that young man had most desired it, while Wesley had cut Xander out with Cordelia. So that was two of the current chanting party with every reason to be anywhere but here. Willow had remained fond of both Angel and Wesley – despite the fact Angel had killed her goldfish and Wesley had been ready to sacrifice her to prevent the Mayor’s ascension – but then Willow had always been something of a law unto herself. Buffy had never had any time for Wesley. He had irritated her from the day he arrived in Sunnydale and she had been ruder to him than Giles had ever seen her be to an adult before; but then it had been made clear that neither Buffy nor Faith saw Wesley as an adult; just an annoying overgrown schoolboy in dress-up clothes pretending to have some authority over them. Yet, somehow here they all were, because of Buffy’s lingering feelings for Angel, or because Angel and Wesley had apparently helped save the world and were now suffering because of it, or because, quite simply, it was the right thing to do.

None of which helped the fact that he was jetlagged, thirsty, irritable, and getting serious cramp in his knees from sitting cross-legged on a hard floor for so many hours. There was only so long one could sit around a circle painted in the mingled blood of clean and unclean alike, candles flickering as their wicks began to sputter, misshapen from a hundred drips of wax, the bird bones and nettle stalks, the yew branch and hollowed skulls; the burning herbs and scattered leaves, the bowls of oil upon which tiny flames floated; throat clogged with incense and smoke and parched from chanting the incantation over and over in Latin which only two of those intoning it even understood… There were two tiny flames reflected in the centre of the spectacles which were so neatly folded in the centre of the circle. An old pair of Wesley’s apparently, along with a ring of Angel’s. Those were the focusing elements; the items that were supposed to ensure that the two who had been lost would be able to pass back through; to show the cosmic forces trying to keep their reality separate from the hell dimension whose boundaries they were attempting to penetrate that these two were meant to be on this side of the gateway.

He was starting to feel that this was also a damaging futility, however. For Buffy, who was sitting beside him, willing Angel back from hell – again. And for the others, who, apart from Willow and Xander, were strangers to him for the most part, and the one who wasn’t a stranger someone he really didn’t like. The human race was barely holding its own in the numbers here. Although he, Buffy, Willow and Xander were certainly flying the flag for homo sapiens, of Angel’s crew there was only one human left, Charles Gunn, vampire slayer and also apparently vampire employee. The others were an anagogic demon; a god-king so ancient and powerful she came from the time before humans lived – someone who walked now in the stolen body of the human woman she had killed; and another demon, one all too familiar to him. William the Bloody. Spike, the second vampire with a soul. Also the second vampire to sleep with Buffy.

Looking across the circle, Giles met Xander’s gaze and saw the man was no more convinced than he was that they weren’t all engaged in an act of absolute futility. Everyone was starting to look worn thin with this; Gunn with his eyes closed concentrating absolutely on saying the words right, gripping Lorne’s hand in his left hand and Spike’s in his right. Spike holding onto Illyria, Willow between Illyria and Buffy, Giles between Buffy and Xander, adding what magical powers he possessed to the general mix, Xander holding a little gingerly to the green hand of the empath demon who was also working what ‘mojo’ he could in this strange summoning. Buffy, Spike and Gunn all had a weapon on the floor behind them, in case what came through wasn’t what they wanted; two swords and an axe, a dull gleam to their sharpened blades.

“I feel something…” Willow breathed.

“Is it them?” Gunn looked up, and gazing at him Giles wondered if he’d slept more than a few hours in the weeks since Wesley had sacrificed himself to close the mouth into that hell dimension and Angel had dived after him.

It was strange to think of Wesley as someone who sacrificed himself. The man Giles had known had hardly been a credit to the Council, although he had been completely a product of their training. Prim, stuffy, pompous, annoying, unprepared for what the reality of a Hellmouth really meant. Probably very like Giles had been, but he liked to think he had possessed a little more humility and a slightly greater willingness to toss aside the rulebook if the occasion demanded it – a little more courage as well. Or perhaps Buffy had just trained him well. Ultimately, he had found that was what happened, after all. Watchers were trained by their Slayers every bit as much as Slayers were trained by their Watchers. Wesley hadn’t had the benefit of a Slayer to train him, as the two allocated to him had rejected him. But Angel, of all people, had taken on his training, not to mention care and preservation. That was still a difficult concept for him to grasp. He couldn’t see anything in the man that Wesley had been to make a vampire warm to him, or believe that someone so entrenched in the Council’s training as Wesley had been would accept the friendship, let alone authority, of a vampire…

“I’m not sure…” Willow was concentrating with all her might. She was bearing most of the burden of keeping this entrance open; and if they succeeded in bringing the lost ones to the gateway, it would also fall upon her to find the strength to help them through and then close the door behind them. That was the real danger, of course – the reason why they shouldn’t be doing this – one didn’t wantonly open the doorway into a hell dimension on the grounds that they were _almost_ sure they could slam it closed again. If Willow lost her mental balance their own reality could start to be sucked into hell or at the very least hell beasts could be released into this world.

“You need to be sure,” said Giles tersely. “You can’t open the doorway unless you’re certain…”

“The door is open.” Willow kept her eyes closed, still concentrating. “Payment for the door they closed. The forces of magic will support balance like that and I have to give them every chance, Giles. We don’t know what kind of shape they’ll be in. Or how long they’ve been there. It could be a day to them or a year or decades… Time might not be the same there as here.”

“Okay for Deadboy,” Xander muttered. “Not so good for Giles Junior.”

Gunn gripped Lorne’s hand so tightly that the demon winced. “Yeah, Wes can’t take too many decades in a hell dimension.”

“It could only have been minutes to them,” Willow said reassuringly.

“That would be nice,” Lorne murmured. “I’d give a big hooray for that option and buy it a Best of Aretha CD as a thank you.”

Illyria said nothing. She hadn’t said anything for hours; not since the glasses had been placed in the circle and she had examined them curiously for a moment, head tilted like a bird of prey. “The shell remembers these. He wore them before.”

“Before what?” Giles queried.

“Laser treatment,” Gunn said at the same time Lorne said: “He had his throat slit.” Then they’d both winced at one another.

“Post-traumatic stress wotsit,” Spike had shrugged. “Didn’t want to look like a victim after being one. Makes sense.”

“Why should wearing glasses make one more likely to look like a victim?” Giles had demanded indignantly and then there had been lots of people averting their eyes from him and not saying very much while Buffy patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and said that she was absolutely certain that someone wearing glasses had no correlation at all to the amount of time they got injured, and certainly not the times they were knocked unconscious, because that would just be silly.

“Wes always did tend to be the one the demons went for.” Gunn had also picked up the glasses to examine them before putting them back in the centre.

“They can sense weakness,” Giles shrugged.

Lorne and Gunn had both glared at him then. “Wes isn’t weak,” Gunn told him shortly.

Giles decided not to argue the point, although from his experience he would have said that Wesley was the dictionary definition of the ‘weakest link’. By comparison with the ex-Watcher, Gunn looked like a person more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight and Illyria appeared to have skin-coloured armour-plating in place of a normal epidermis. Admittedly Lorne’s contribution to any fight seemed to be to offer to buy the lurking evil a drink or sing it a medley of show numbers but…

“Whoever it is, they’re coming fast…”

He was snapped back to the present by Willow’s quiet voice and realized how tired he must be to be drifting off at a time like this.

“Let it be them, let it be them…” Gunn breathed.

Throat raw from chanting Latin, Giles wished vainly for a cup of tea, trying to tell himself that he was perfectly calm, not invested in this outcome, only here out of politeness, but there was some part of him also willing them to come back, for the people trying to break out of this dimension to be the ones who had leapt into it for the common good. 

Then there was a roar of light and flame, a tear in the air, and something came through, something naked and singed, and then the something was rolling across the floor, out of the circle and Giles realized it was not a something or even a someone but two people, one of which was Angel, the other clasped tightly in his arms as Angel rolled them both away from the circle and halfway to the stairs.

“Close it!” Angel shouted hoarsely. “You have to close it now!” He backed up across the floor, using his heels to propel himself and the person clasped in his arms away from the portal.

As Willow rapidly began to say the incantation, two demons leapt through the rip in the air, horned, clawed, half-furred and half-scaled, with glowing red eyes; they were huge – eight feet tall – and brandishing vicious weapons with serrated blades.

The way Gunn snatched at his sword and threw himself at them, Giles realized the man must have been wanting to kill something for some time now. He swung his axe at the first demon with such savagery that although it was nearly two feet taller than he was it still staggered back at the impact. Buffy and Spike had also grabbed their weapons and thrown themselves at the demons.

“You have to get out of the circle!” Giles shouted at them. Willow was still saying the incantation and the first demon seemed to realize that she was the source of power in the room. It struck Gunn a vicious blow which he barely blocked with the axe, and then elbowed him savagely in the head, knocking him ten feet across the room, down, and, Giles feared, out, at least temporarily. Buffy and Spike were still fighting the other demon as the first one turned its attention on Willow.

“No!” Xander threw himself at it and boldly shoulder charged it away from his friend.

Snarling angrily, the demon backhanded Xander into the reception desk and began to stalk back towards Willow. As Giles made to attack it, a hand calmly caught him by the shoulder and yanked him out of the circle, then Illyria, the blue-haired ancient one, held up a hand and a bubble of bluish light enveloped both the demons while leaving Willow untouched. Spike and Buffy looked like something from a museum display, warriors captured in the moment of fighting, except that they were moving, Giles noticed, albeit very slowly. Still calmly, Illyria strode to where Buffy and Spike were duelling with the demon, caught them by the back of their jackets and plucked them cleanly out of the bubble of slowed time. Then she nodded to Willow.

“Thank you,” the witch said cheerfully, and finished the incantation with a hand gesture that caused the portal to ripple and eddy before abruptly sucking the two demons back through it and closing with a last foul belch of hot air.

Giles watched Buffy speed across to Angel at a pace that suggested she had been every bit as invested in his safe return as he had feared. Lorne was already there, saying gently, “Angelcakes, is it really you?”

“Yes.” Angel was hoarse but coherent. “We made it.”

“Is Wesley…?” Lorne swallowed. “How long was it for you?”

“Alive. About eight months.” Angel reached down to the person clasped in his arms and Giles saw that they were a tangle of naked limbs, still hanging onto one another as if even now they thought they could be ripped apart. 

“Not as bad as last time then.” That was Buffy and it wasn’t a question. She crouched down next to Angel. “Are you okay?”

He was looking around in confusion, flinching from the light, and Giles saw there were wounds all over his body. As he got nearer he saw that there were wounds all over Wesley’s as well; but amongst the evidence of various random cruelties there also seemed to be sigils burned into his skin. “Yes,” Angel answered Buffy distractedly, already looking around for Willow. “Can you undo these? They can track him here.”

“Yes.” She looked shocked by their condition and Giles could see everyone was wincing as they took in what bad shape these two had come back to them.

“Are we home…?” Wesley whispered.

Angel cupped his cheek gently in his hand. “Yes, Wes. We’re here.”

Wesley flinched more violently from the light than Angel had done, eyes watering at the brightness. As he raised his head, Giles saw that his face was covered in cuts and bruises but he still had both eyes and given the way they were reacting to the light they seemed able to see. Their hair was unkempt and matted but although Wesley was unshaven he didn’t have what could have been described as a beard, only about a week’s growth. They both looked starved but although Angel appeared lean and hard, Wesley was skin and bone – and bruised, slashed and welted skin at that. Yet none of his wounds looked serious. He seemed to have been running fast through rough ground and had picked up all the bruises and cuts one would expect, but he had none of the deep bleeding wounds that Angel had sustained.

Giles crouched down by them while Spike found a blanket. “Wesley?” Giles enquired gently. “Do you know where you are?”

Wesley gave him a look of flickering panic that turned slowly into recognition. “Mister Giles?”

“Yes.” Compos mentis then as well as able to see. That was a good sign. “That’s right.”

Except Wesley was still looking somewhat panic stricken. “Did the Council send you?”

“No,” Giles assured him quickly. “Not the Council. I’m here as a friend, Wesley.” As the man still looked more panicked than not, he said, “The Council doesn’t know I’m here.”

Only then did Wesley snatch a breath and look back at Angel. “Are we in Sunnydale?”

“No. The Hyperion. L.A.” Despite having spoken with authority, Angel still looked around as if he needed to double check.

“And it’s our dimension?” Wesley’s skin was clammy-looking, Giles noticed, frighteningly pale, terrible shadows under his eyes. He looked like a fever patient and when he touched his forehead it felt hot to the touch.

Angel looked between them all. “They seem to be expecting us.”

“I don’t want to go back to England,” Wesley breathed quickly, after another panicked look in Giles’ direction. “Angel…”

“You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t want to do ever again,” Angel said tautly. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

“Wes!” Gunn staggered up from the floor and ran over to them, throwing himself down next to the two. “Are you okay? Man, you had us scared!”

Wesley gazed at the man for a moment and then said, “Charles.” He smiled at Angel. “And he’s not dead.”

“Just like I told you.”

“And you’re pretty much the same age you were when you went into that place. But…” Gunn reached out to touch Wesley’s torn shoulders. “What happened to you?” His legs were bruised and cut, as were Angel’s. They could all see the claw marks across the vampire’s body now, diagonally marking his back, around his ribs, and across his upper arms, as well as numerous still-bleeding injuries from bladed weapons. If they had made a last stand, Angel had clearly taken the brunt of it defending Wesley.

“Bad place.” Wesley tried to smile but the shuddering and the flicker of raw panic behind his eyes took off any reassuring aspect he’d been trying to convey. “Very bad place. Can you get Angel some blood? He’s hungry.” He caught sight of the green demon and his face broke into another smile of relief. “Lorne.”

“Yes, crumpet, it’s me. And I’m not dead either. And very relieved to see you two are also in the land of the living.” But although Lorne’s voice was reassuring, he also looked horrified at their condition. Giles couldn’t blame him for that. He was feeling pretty horrified himself.

As Wesley shifted his position slightly they saw the bite marks on his arms and thighs and Giles looked at Angel in accusation. The vampire became aware of his gaze and said, “Yes, it was me. It was necessary.”

“He looks starved half to death,” Giles protested.

“He’s alive.” It was Spike who spoke. “Who really thinks he still would be if Angel hadn’t gone after him?”

To hear Angel defended by Spike of all people was enough of a shock to silence Giles at least and he saw that Xander, now also muzzily approaching, looked equally astonished.

Wesley was still clinging to Angel who had kept a protective arm around him, not yet untangled from one another fully. Angel stroked Wesley’s matted hair back from his bruised face and said again gently, “Wes, we’re home.”

“Christ!” Xander saw their condition for the first time and recoiled.

Spike glared at him. “It was a hell dimension, not a holiday resort. What did you expect?”

Wesley had to focus on Xander for a long time before there was any flicker of recognition but then his eyes widened. “Xander. What happened to your eye?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Xander tried to find a reassuring smile and almost managed it. “It happened a while ago. You look a little rough around the edges yourself, my friend.”

Wesley turned to Gunn, apparently feeling that he should make introductions. “Xander was a friend of Cordelia’s. He bought her the dress she wore to the Prom. She looked lovely.”

“She always did.” Gunn smiled at him but Giles noticed there were tears in his eyes; relief at getting them back still hitting him hard. Gunn touched Wesley’s shoulder gently. “Good to have you home, English.”

Willow said, “Xander bought…?” Willow and Buffy both looked at Xander in surprise and Buffy said: “You bought Cordelia’s Prom dress?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Xander’s gaze was still fixed on Wesley. He crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”

Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you.” 

Xander glanced across at Angel, who was looking, Giles thought, pale even for a vampire. He was clearly exhausted and at the end of his resources, but he was still holding onto Wesley. “Deadboy take care of you in there?”

“No…Angel.” Wesley clearly had trouble processing that and then finally got who Xander was referring to. He smiled again. “Yes…Angel. He took care of me.”

“We took care of each other.” Angel tightened his grip on Wesley.

Seeing Willow standing behind Buffy, Wesley smiled at her very sweetly. “Willow. You gave Angel back his soul.”

“Yes.” She spoke to him gently: “Are you feeling okay, Wesley?”

“I’d like a shower.” Wesley looked down at himself. “And I think some clothes would be a good idea.”

“What about a nice cup of tea?” Giles suggested. As they all looked at him in scorn, he stuck to his guns. He knew where Wesley came from; his background; what the man probably reached for in times of crisis.

Sure enough, Wesley’s face cleared. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

A shadow fell over them and Wesley flinched. Illyria said sadly: “You do not remember me?”

Wesley peered at her for a moment and then said, without accusation: “You’re the demon who killed the woman I loved.”

Seeing the hurt wash across Illyria’s face, Willow said hastily, “She helped. Illyria stopped the demons from the…bad place coming after you.”

Not looking at her, attention focused back on Angel again, Wesley said, “That was kind of you. Thank you.” But it was the reply of a child thanking his aunt for an unwanted Christmas present out of sheer politeness. Giles didn’t think anyone was surprised when Illyria turned around and walked away. Spike looked as if he would have gone after her, grimacing as he watched her retreat, but apparently his need to be near Buffy – or perhaps even to see to the two who had returned – was stronger than sympathy for her and he stayed put.

“Come on, Wes. We need to get you upstairs where the hot water and the beds are.” Angel began to rise painfully to his feet, Buffy reaching out to help him and then stopping. His nakedness did make it a little difficult to find anywhere to lend a hand without it seeming a little more intimate than one might care for and Giles automatically took a step back. Gunn, however, was already holding Wesley by his other arm, assisting Angel in helping the man clamber to his feet. Wesley swayed, what little colour had been in his face draining out of it with the shock of being upright, while Angel also seemed to be staying on his feet only by clinging to the banister. 

“You all right, mate?” Spike enquired of Angel.

Angel managed a teeth-gritted grin. “Peachy.”

“So, you booked a return flight to that hell dimension or do you think you’re going to try another one next time?”

“As soon as I’ve killed my travel agent for the last trip, I’ll let you know.”

“What do you need?” Lorne asked.

Angel looked around at them all. “To be here and not there. Thank you all for that.”

“It was nothing,” Giles shrugged.

“Just lots of mind numbingly tedious chanting and getting smacked around by demons,” Xander agreed.

“What do you need _now_?” Lorne persisted. “Blood? Painkillers? Some soothing music and a massage? How about a nice very alcoholic drink?”

“All of those sound good.” Angel looked at Wesley. “But first we need to undo the location spell they put on him.”

“I can do that,” said Willow cheerfully. “And being a lesbian I’m extra safe around Wesley’s naked body, so that’s a bonus too.”

Wesley looked at her curiously. “When did you become a lesbian?”

“Long story,” she assured him. “I’ll tell you later.”

His bewilderment was unexpectedly innocent. “Does Oz know?”

 

For some reason, Giles felt bound to follow the painfully slow procession of Angel helping Wesley up the stairs, as apparently did everyone else, as they all trooped after them. Spike had wrapped the blanket a little awkwardly around their shoulders but it had slipped down. Gunn and Lorne were hovering protectively while Angel took Wesley’s weight, such as it was. Angel still had his arm firmly across Wesley’s scored back, his own tattoo the only familiar markings on the vampire’s skin, that was also marked with old and new wounds, and both of them liberally dusted with bruises and dirt.

“Giles, can you…?” 

Realizing what Willow was asking, he took the book from her while she juggled ingredients, flicking through the pages to try to find the most suitable spell for undoing a locator curse. 

“This one should work.” He marked the page with his handkerchief. “Do you want me to do it?” He knew how much of a toll it must have taken upon her to first open the portal and then close it again.

She shook her head. “Not that you’re not extra safe around Wesley’s naked body too, but I think he associates you with the Council and England and that doesn’t seem to be a happy place for him.”

“Because they fired him?” Buffy asked in a small voice. “Because his Slayer resigned from the Council?”

“It’s his father.” Spike pressed back to let them pass him on the stairs. “Not that Giles looks like him – well, the tweed is a bit similar but – anyway, lot of history there, and he’s another Watcher, works for the Council. Bit of a red flag for Wesley.”

Giles thought of that flicker of panic in Wesley’s eyes. “I’ve met Roger Wyndam-Pryce on a few occasions, of course. Rather a cold man, I always thought, not much imagination, but I wouldn’t think he was someone who would inspire that level of fear.”

Gunn looked over his shoulder. “Think again.”

Buffy was still gazing at Angel. It wasn’t that she was unaware of Wesley or indifferent to his condition, Giles had seen her wince sympathetically at him a number of times, but it was always such a shock for her and Angel to see one another again; that soul-deep connection between them like an electric shock so tangible it seemed to make everyone in the vicinity jolt slightly in reaction. Except this time, the current seemed to be flowing all one way. Giles didn’t know if it was a reaction to the spell or his exhaustion from all the hours of making the spell happen, hours which had followed a long flight from England and a long drive to this hotel, but he was feeling hyper sensitive to everything; the buzzing of a trapped fly by the window, the way light was swallowed by Xander’s eye patch, the streaks of mingled dirt and blood on Angel’s back, the way the sigils burned into Wesley’s shoulders were squirming slightly, like bugs under a microscope; and the broken thread between Angel and Buffy; he’d seen her this time and the jolt hadn’t been there; all his attention already diverted.

Eight months in a hell dimension, Giles thought. Presumably the person you were with became your whole world. And your cause, he guessed, when you were a protector, as Angel was; when you were someone who needed to make amends. It was strange to be surrounded by people who wanted to help Angel make amends while he was here as one of the things for which Angel needed to make amends for – one of the torture victims; one of those who had lost a loved one to the cruelty of Angelus. In that hell dimension Wesley had probably been the only thing there worth saving, the one Angel had to protect as part of his redemption. And perhaps out of simple friendship. Despite the bite marks clearly visible on his arms and legs, and the confusion in his mind, Wesley seemed completely trusting of the vampire.

 

Giles decided that as Willow had the sigil-removing spell well in hand, that he should see about making Wesley that cup of tea he’d offered him. And having one himself. Given Wesley’s feverish condition a Beechams Powder would probably be more appropriate, in some hot lemon and honey, but as he doubted he would find any of these things in a place as uncivilized as LA, he thought he had better concentrate on tea. He found tea-making things in the office, even, oddly enough some English Breakfast tea. The death date had long since passed but when he wiped off the dust from the container he found that tea bags inside still smelt fresh and when he took a sip of his own mug of tea it tasted fine. He sloshed extra milk into the cup and drank it down in a few gulps, some feelings returning to his throat as he did so. For Wesley, however, he hunted around in the cupboards until he found a bone china cup and saucer. Somehow that seemed important – something so familiar after being somewhere so strange. He knew Angel was probably traumatized too but he couldn’t relate to the trauma of a souled vampire. An Englishman, however, particularly an Englishman trained from an early age to be a Watcher, was a very different…well, cup of tea.

As he entered the bedroom, he realized it must once have been Angel’s. A room prepared for his return, with maroon walls, and a double bed made up in readiness. Someone had put out photographs on the dresser: several of Angel, Wesley and Cordelia from happier times which Giles found unexpectedly poignant. Wesley was bespectacled and smiling and Cordelia was dazzling the cameraman with a thousand watt smile of her own. It was difficult for him to believe that the girl he had regarded with exasperation for so long had turned into the bearer of the visions, helper of the helpless, hapless tool of a higher power, and was now dead. This life seemed to burn up the young much too fast sometimes, and he wasn’t sure that it did a lot for those in their forties either. Or their two hundred and forties…

Angel looked done in and past the point of done in. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, his gaze fixed on Wesley; Buffy, Gunn, Lorne, and Xander hovering close to him. Spike sat a little apart from the others smoking a cigarette and looking at Buffy’s back as if he could will her to look around just by concentration alone. Looking past Xander’s shoulder to see why they were converging there, Giles saw an old-fashioned bathroom with large bronze-coloured taps, the bath on clawed feet, its porcelain base slightly stained with limescale.

Willow was being endlessly patient with Wesley, who had to be distracted from looking across at Angel every thirty seconds or so to see if he was still in eyeshot. Someone had wrapped a towel around his waist and Willow was now inviting him to sit in the bath so the herbs and oils she had to pour over the squirming sigils ‘don’t make the carpet all icky’. Wesley was compliant and obedient, apparently only having good feelings about Willow. He kept looking around for Angel, but Gunn, Lorne and Willow were also clearly considered what Buffy called ‘of the good’. Buffy he seemed confused by, although he recognized her and identified her by name, and he kept looking at Xander’s eye patch as if it were a puzzle he ought to be able to solve. But on beholding Giles, Wesley instinctively flinched. As Giles was the one who had spent the most time with Wesley in Sunnydale, and as Giles had – he always thought – exercised extraordinary patience with Wesley when he was being a pompous little twerp, not to mention saving his life, it did rather hurt. 

Buffy was doing her bit for the ‘desigilling’ process by holding the spell book for Willow which at least gave her something to do that didn’t involve gazing at Angel while Spike gazed at her like a lovesick puppy.

“Your tea, Wesley,” Giles said, refusing to acknowledge the eye-rolling from Xander as he firmly handed it over in its entirely proper, entirely British, bone china cup and saucer.  
Wesley seemed very gratified by both, and sipped the tea with every sign of pleasure while managing to hold both cup and saucer reasonably steady despite the whole-body trembling that was reverberating through him. There was certainly some sloshing of tea into saucer and from saucer into the bath, but Giles was glad to have it confirmed that something as reassuringly civilized as English Breakfast tea in a bone china cup and saucer was exactly what an Englishman needed most after eight months in a hell dimension.

Lorne fetched Angel a beaker of blood, ‘freshly nuked’ as Gunn phrased it, from the microwave. As the demon handed it over, he said, “Do you want some vodka with that, cupcake?”

Angel was still swaying with exhaustion but he hung onto the doorway of the bathroom around which they were all crowding to keep himself upright and managed a wan smile for Lorne. “Maybe later.” As he smelt the blood, Giles saw the hunger flicker through Angel, the vampire having to fight not to go into game face just in response.

“We don’t mind,” Buffy said gently. “We know you must be hungry.”

“He’s starving.” Wesley looked up from where Willow was pouring an incantation down his back.

Angel sipped the blood without going into game face and returned Wesley’s gaze levelly, an odd expression on his face as he said, “This is good but I’ve had better.” He didn’t look at Buffy although she immediately looked at him. He was still gazing at Wesley. Giles felt rather than saw that small slump of dejection in her slight body and had to control a flicker of anger. Angel wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. He had just forgotten in the intervening months that there had ever been a life for him that didn’t revolve around the man currently having occult sigils removed from his welted skin by a witch.

“Ah, vampire humour.” Giles couldn’t stop a grimace, but he did find the whole blood drinking thing fairly distasteful, and the victim being complicit actually seemed to make it more distasteful. “Can I ask why it was necessary to…” he gritted his teeth, “drink the blood of your friend?”

“Survival.” Angel returned his gaze levelly. “Both of ours. Humans have no rights in that dimension. They’re just food. I only got to keep my food if I fought for it. I couldn’t fight for it – for Wesley – when I was too weak with hunger to stand upright. When I killed, it was better. Then we both ate. Although Wes couldn’t always keep it down. Raw demon flesh is a bit of an acquired taste.” 

Lorne pulled a face. “Sorry to hear you’ve acquired it, pumpkin.” He held out a glass. “Sure you don’t want this?” As Angel shook his head, Lorne took another deep gulp of what was apparently a ‘Sea Breeze’. “Well, as you both look in need of some serious alcoholic consumption to me, I’d better just drink for three.”

Angel continued: “After six months or so we were captured for The Games. Gladiatorial fights. They’d feed your…food – a little – but not you; you only got to drink when you killed. Wes had to feed me in the days in between the fights so we both made it to the next bout. It got to the point where neither of us would have made it any longer if we’d stayed in that place. So Wes fed another vampire in exchange for some herbs he needed to cast a spell and used it to break the lock. Then we ran and were hunted. We had no strength left when we felt you pulling us towards the portal.”

“Angel won all his fights.” Wesley obediently leant his head forward so Willow could dissolve another sigil. 

Angel gazed across at Wesley. “I had to.” 

Buffy said, “Because if you hadn’t Wesley would have…”

“Been given to whoever killed me.”

She grimaced. “Well, that sucks.”

“It’s what kept me alive. I couldn’t have fought just for me. Fighting to stop Wes ending up as demon brunch – that was motivating.”

“So, you did take care of each other.” Xander looked at Angel with slightly more liking than usual.

Angel returned his gaze. “It’s what we do here. All of us.” 

“Family,” Wesley supplied from the bath. “Angel Investigations. One big not very happy rather dysfunctional family. When we’re not trying to kill each other. Which we also do from time to time.” He winced apologetically at Gunn. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Wes.” Gunn peered at what Willow was doing curiously. “It’s just another shared experience. We’ve all had a gut wound now.”

“I haven’t.” Lorne finished another glass and reached for the vodka bottle. “And I’d just like to point out that I really don’t want one, not even to be in your exclusive little ‘oh please do use my viscera for a colander’ club.”

“We try to kill each other too, sometimes,” Willow assured Wesley comfortingly. “It’s not a good thing but I think it’s part of being a family member.”

“Like killing your father?” Wesley nodded sagely. “We do that too. Except for Spike – who killed his mother. And Charles didn’t…?” He twisted his head round to look at the man. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No, vampires did for my parents. I did kill my sister though.”

“The vampires killed her, Gunn,” Angel said at once. “What you killed was the demon who looked like her. Not Alonna.”

“And it wasn’t your real father, remember, Wesley?” Lorne observed. “Only a robot.”

“It acted just like him.” Wesley put a hand up to the back of his head. “It didn’t like me either.”

Xander grimaced. “Well, I can relate to that.”

“We don’t tend to kill our parents so much in Sunnydale,” Buffy put in. “But sometimes they die anyway.”

There was a silence in which Spike said to her quietly, “Are you all right, pet?”

“Not really, no.” Buffy looked at Angel, still propped against the wall. At some point, Giles realized, he had pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was still bare and his wounds clearly visible. Then she looked across at Wesley, who was having another burning sigil gently erased by Willow. “I really don’t like hell dimensions. I don’t like it when they try to leak into our world or when people from our world get sucked into them and I don’t like what gets done to people in them.”

Clearly trying to make her feel better, Wesley said, “Lorne’s sort of from a hell dimension. It’s a demon dimension, anyway. And he’s very nice. And Angel’s son was brought up in a hell dimension – one of the really bad ones – and he would probably have turned out quite well if events hadn’t conspired to make him totally psychotic.”

Giles felt a migraine begin to throb behind his temples as Xander said: “Yeah, that Angel having a son thing – never really got that on account of the whole – being dead and therefore having other things that are dead and not capable of producing… I’ll be quiet now.”

“I always meant to ask – was this just a spontaneous gesture that arrived ready-wrapped in swaddling or did you have to do some kind of baby-making ritual first?” Buffy enquired.

Angel took a strengthening sip of blood. “There was some – baby-making involved.”

“He wasn’t himself.” Wesley nodded. “His head was…not really on top of his neck. A rogue Higher Power needed Connor to be born so Jasmine could be born, but… that’s really quite a dull story.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Giles mopped his brow. “And what mundane lives you do live here.”

Wesley considered that for a moment and then said, “I think that on average we probably live quite interesting lives, but I suppose they could seem dull to other people.”

Giles opened his mouth to explain that he was being sarcastic and decided to give up with a sigh. “Why don’t I take that teacup from you, Wesley?” he offered instead.

“That’s the last one.” Willow beamed at Wesley. “You’re all sigil-free now. Can’t be tracked. And you can have a bath, if you’d like one, not that I’m saying you need one, but if you wanted one, that would be okay. Would you like me to wash your hair for you? Not that the dreadlocks don’t suit you…”

“Thank you.” He smiled back at her and handed his teacup and saucer to Giles. “I’d like not to smell of Ertash any more.”

“Is that a person or a place?” Buffy whispered to Angel.

He grimaced. “It’s a species. Slaver demons. Nasty. You don’t want to know.” Angel elbowed himself off the wall and glanced around at all of them. “Thanks for all your help. Willow, it’s okay, I’ll get Wesley and myself cleaned up, then I really think he needs some sleep. If you’re still here when we wake up, perhaps we can talk then.”

It was a dismissal and Buffy looked a little stung, but she only nodded, said quietly, “Of course,” and turned to go.

Giles heard Spike saying to her quietly: “He’s not himself, love. He’s worried about Wes.”

“He’s moved on,” she returned. 

“And you haven’t?” Spike sighed. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Look – Angel needs someone to save. You don’t need saving. Wes and the others here – they need a lot of saving. These guys are the day job. You’re the reward he doesn’t think he’s won yet.”

“Sometimes I need saving too.” Buffy looked so young to Giles he wanted to wrap her in his arms and hug her. She didn’t say it aloud: _I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be born the Slayer_. None of them had, of course, and when he thought of what it had cost them all he sometimes wondered if it was worth it. Of course it was, he did know that, it just didn’t always _feel_ that way.

Willow looked a little disappointed. “Can I cut Wesley’s hair tomorrow?” 

“Maybe.” Angel took the shower attachment from her. “We’ll see how he’s feeling.”

“I don’t mind washing his hair,” she added hopefully.

“Willow, he’s not a stray dog,” Giles said patiently. “And although I’m sure he’ll clean up beautifully, I really think it would be better if Angel was the one who did any bathing that needs to be done.”

“Oh, okay.” Willow looked disappointed but did get out of the bath, saying gently to Wesley, “Angel’s going to wash your hair instead, Wesley, but if you want me to cut it I’d really like to. I remember how you had it before.”

“I could do Angel’s,” Buffy offered. “I remember how his was too.”

“Yes, love, I think we all remember how Angel’s was,” Spike observed. “Some of us still have nightmares.”

“Criticism of my hair.” Angel sat on the edge of the bath and looked down at Wesley. “I guess we’re really home.” Wesley leant across and took Angel’s wrist in his hands to examine a bite wound with great solemnity. Angel felt his forehead and winced. “We need to get your temperature down, Wes.”

“I know a really good herbal cure for fevers. I can make some up for Wesley if you like?” Willow called back to Angel.

“Yes, do that downstairs, Willow. I really think they want some privacy.” Giles made vague ushering motions to the loiterers, feeling that he should do his part to try to preserve ex-Watcher dignity by at least trying to guarantee that Wesley had a bath in peace. But when he looked back from the doorway of the bedroom, Angel was oblivious of all of them, running hot water into the bath and testing the spray of the hand held shower spray against his hand before very gently running it down the back of Wesley’s neck. 

“Is that too hot?” he asked.

“No. It feels good.” Wesley closed his eyes as the water trickled down his scored back but he didn’t flinch and he seemed, for the first time, perfectly relaxed; being alone with Angel was apparently the time when he felt the most safe.

“You’ve got a temperature but Willow’s going to mix something up for you to help with it. Then you need to sleep. Okay?”

“Okay.” Wesley gazed up at the vampire and gave him an unexpectedly sweet smile. Giles wondered if he had simply had too many braincells fried to ever be who he was again or if this was the way they were together; Wesley, trustingly childlike, Angel protective and fond. He suspected the Wesley had known would have been more likely to become increasingly brittle with the passing of time, the accumulated mental scar tissue of crises survived, the never-ending stress. This was someone else; the product of a hell dimension; the product of a mind that had possibly snapped under the strain, or at the very least was taking a short holiday from reality.

 

Giles backed out of the bedroom and quietly closed the door. Outside, he said, “Am I the only one who has a problem with Angel using Wesley as a packed lunch?”

“It was probably Wesley’s idea.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s done it before. Fed Angel, I mean. When Angel went three months without food he needed something richer than pig’s blood so Wesley sliced his arm open and fed him his own blood.”

“Ah.” Giles grimaced. “I didn’t need to know that.”

“You’re too squeamish,” Spike told him dismissively. “Too many years in a small town Hellmouth instead of mixing it in the metropolis.”

“Presumably they have bigger shinier demons in LA?” Buffy observed. She looked as tired as Giles felt, but there was no possibility of them getting any sleep, he realized, they were all too wired from the aftermath of magic.

Willow was looking at Lorne’s suit with every sign of approval. “We certainly didn’t get so many who wore lamé.”

The horned demon nodded sagely. “That’s probably because you were mostly dealing with evil demons – being on a Hellmouth and all – they can’t carry it off. In fact, I’ve noticed that evil demons are often fashion-challenged.”

Buffy nodded. “I’ve noticed that too.”

“Yeah, look at Spike.” Xander jerked his head in the direction of the vampire.

As they all did, the vampire said defensively: “What?”

“It’s the hair,” Gunn explained. “It’s so…not of the now. And shouldn’t vampires get some kind of make over when they get a soul anyway?”

“You’re talking to me about hair? How can you work for Angel for all this time, Captain Hairgel himself, and criticize my style?”

“Angel can carry it off.” Lorne took another sip of his refilled cocktail. “He’s always managed to make having something with hold seem like a necessity when finding the hellspawns of evil. It’s like the coat. It’s all about the coat.”

“And the car,” Gunn added. 

“I miss the leather pants,” Lorne admitted.

Xander said incredulously, “Do you people work for Angel or date him?”

“What, his coat is better than mine now as well? You have got to be kidding me. This coat is way better than…”

“Do you mean the coat you took from the body of the Slayer you murdered?” Giles massaged his temples then counted to three before saying as patiently as he could: “I appreciate that after such a momentous event as getting Angel and Wesley back from the hell dimension in which they’ve been suffering for the past eight months that some discussion is necessary. However, if I’m going to have my migraine interrupted with noise I would rather it was about something rather more relevant and interesting that Spike’s appallingly obvious hair dye and poor taste in clothes.”

Xander said, “Can we talk about how everyone who works for Angel seems to be under some kind of weird hex? First Wesley and now these two. When Spike is sounding like the voice of reason, I know I’ve stepped into a parallel universe.”

Spike looked at Xander aghast. “You’re agreeing with me?”

“About Angel having scarily bad hair? Damned right.”

“Well, don’t. It just makes me question my own judgement.”

Groaning inwardly, Giles met Willow’s eye and muttered darkly, “It’s going to be a very long night.”

 

It was two hours later when Giles realized that his overwhelming need to go and see how Wesley was could no longer be ignored. It irritated him intensely; he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t even liked Wesley when the man had arrived in Sunnydale. He had been so arrogant, naïve, priggish, hidebound, completely unprepared for the reality of fieldwork after the theory of the Academy; emotionally immature, acting as if women were a new species he had never actually encountered before; fluttering ineffectually around Cordelia as if asking a woman to dance involved more mental effort than…

Giles winced as he realized just how many of Wesley’s annoying characteristics were ones he’d shared on his first arrival at Sunnydale. He’d been so excited by the idea of the Hellmouth; the prospect of seeing all those demons face to face that he’d only read about in books; convinced that as he’d studied how to train a slayer that meant he knew how to deal with the reality of a living, breathing, vulnerable human being and the fact of having to send her out to face death every night. That was what Watchers did, of course. They sent a young girl out to risk her life for the common good while they sat home and studied. That was why only certain people made it as Watchers; the unimaginative ones who never let themselves feel and knew what they did was right, and the ones who cared too much, got in too deep, and either got themselves killed, got themselves fired, or had a nervous breakdown. Wesley had been no less unprepared than he had been, but Buffy had been more tolerant with Giles than she had been prepared to be with Wesley later and, as it was on Giles’ behalf that she was ignoring Wesley, Giles hadn’t exactly been devastated by it. Of course the man _had_ been annoying. Intensely annoying but all the same….

Giles found that he had left the others still arguing over their pizza. Well, Gunn and Xander were arguing with Spike about something to do with vampires, no doubt, or possibly football; Giles hadn’t really been listening for quite some time. 

He made his way cautiously to the bedroom, not wanting to wake Angel if he was asleep but hoping for directions as to where he could find Wesley’s room if he was awake. The door was still ajar; and when he looked through the gap, he saw that Angel and Wesley were both in the same bed, although Wesley was asleep and Angel was awake, Angel with his elbow propped up on the pillow watching the human sleep. 

“He’s going to be okay.” Angel kept his voice low but evidently knew Giles was there without looking. “He just really needs some sleep.”

“I imagine that’s true of you, too.” Giles stayed in the doorway, still a little disconcerted by the fact they were sharing a bed. Of course, with Wesley in his current mental condition it was probably inevitable that Angel would have to stay close, but he hadn’t expected something quite so intimate.

“I slept for an hour or so. I feel better now.” Angel gently stroked a hand down Wesley’s ribcage, not in the way a man touched a lover or a child, but like a part of his own body; the line between his body and Wesley’s blurred somewhere along the line. “I need to hear his heartbeat.” He dipped his head to press it against Wesley’s chest and then smiled. “It’s a good sound.”

Giles came into the room and gently closed the door. “Are you…? I mean…” He didn’t know how to say that the man he’d known hadn’t – he thought, given the girlfriends Gunn had told him about – been gay even if it had been assumed he was rather more often than not; so if Angel had made Wesley his lover it seemed to have more to do with Angel’s sheer force of personality and Wesley’s somewhat weak will than any real lifestyle choice on the ex-Watcher’s part. 

Angel looked confused and then his face cleared. “No. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”

“Appropriate?” Giles couldn’t disguise his surprise at such a pompous choice of words. 

“We were on the run. Lots of adrenalin. Extreme circumstances. Who doesn’t want to at a time like that? But you can’t take it back afterwards. I don’t care but Wes might.”

“So you wanted to but you didn’t?” Giles took another step into the room and looked at Wesley. Despite the cuts and bruises, not to mention the jutting ribs, he looked oddly peaceful.

“I’m male. We always want to, don’t we? And he was all that was around. But Wes deserves better than that.” 

Giles thought perhaps substituting ‘vampire’ for ‘male’ there would have been more accurate, although perhaps Angel saw no great personality difference between the man he had once been and the vampire he now was. And it was typically arrogant of Angel to assume that all it would have taken for him to seduce Wesley was for him to choose to do it, of course, but Giles suspected that it was also probably honest.

“Do you…?” Giles wasn’t sure how he, of all people, had fallen into this conversation. “Do you…love him…?”

“Of course I love him.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “We’re family.”

“I mean… I don’t know what I mean.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them to avoid making eye contact. “Not wanting to hit anyone over the head with the blindingly obvious but you are in bed together.”

“We’ve been sleeping together for – well, not warmth, I suppose, but comfort, for the past eight months. With the emphasis on ‘sleeping’.” Angel brushed a hand through Wesley’s damp tangle of hair. “We can’t sleep without the other one nearby now. We’ll get over it. Just…not right away.”

“Because you need to hear his heartbeat?”

“Yes. I need to know he’s alive. That another day is past and I haven’t got him killed.” Angel ran a hand down Wesley’s arm, turning it over to reveal the bite marks. “That I haven’t killed him.” Carefully, Angel rolled Wesley over a little so he could move his arm out from under him and then wedged a pillow behind him. Only then did he gingerly get off the bed. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Wesley.

Angel pulled on a pair of trousers, disconcerting Giles further as he realized that Angel was not just in bed with a naked Wesley but _naked_ in bed with a naked Wesley. Angel walked silently across the room away from the bed, but Giles could feel his reluctance, as if there was some thread between vampire and ex-Watcher being pulled tighter and thinner as the distance between them spread.

“I need to leave the door so I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”

Seeing the expression on Angel’s face, Giles thought about that ‘family’ comment and realized that this really was a family, just not the Waltons. 

“Was this what you always wanted, Angel?” Giles looked around the hotel. “A family? And you at the head? What are the others to you – child substitutes?”

“Did you set out to become the good father to a bunch of American teenagers?” 

Giles took off his glasses and examined them for dust. They were spotless. He put them back on again. “No.”

Angel pushed the door half across the doorway, so Wesley was still visible but slightly shielded from the noise in the rest of the hotel. “I didn’t know that what I wanted was a family until I already had one. Cordy and Wes became my kids for a time, it’s true, because that was what they needed as much as me. Her father was in prison. His was…a waste of space. They wanted someone who would love them unconditionally. I did. I do. But they grew up. That isn’t the kind of relationship we have now. It isn’t the kind of relationship we’ve had for a long time. I used to work for Wes. I used to be in love with the woman Cordelia grew up to become.”

Giles cleared his throat as they walked away from the room, with Angel still looking back over his shoulder in case Wesley should stir at all. “So, you don’t see yourself as the ruling patriarch then?”

“Well, of course. But – it was different before. When Cordelia was alive… I wanted it for all of us. Not just for me. Me and Cordy, Baby Connor, Wes, Gunn and Fred. Lorne lending a hand. That was how the family was for a while. It worked. It wasn’t just my fantasy that time.”

“Until Wesley ruined everything?” 

Angel hesitated. “Yes. No. I’ve thought about it since and I think Holtz would have started picking off my people if he hadn’t been in Quor’toth. Wesley thought he was a threat…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Connor is okay now.”

“What about Wesley? Is he ever going to be okay again?”

“What do you mean?”

“He tried to kill his friend, didn’t he?”

“I tried to kill my friend as well.” Angel looked back over his shoulder at the doorway even though they were too far down the corridor now for him possibly to be able to see inside. 

“Ah, I see, not so much the Waltons as the Manson Family.”

Angel gave Giles a level look. “I’m not a serial killer. Well…not any more.”

Giles mentally counted to ten. “My point is that this is not the healthiest environment for someone to recover from terrible physical and psychological trauma, and you and your companions do not seem the most well adjusted people I’ve ever met either. This is where everything went wrong for Wesley, isn’t it? He stole Connor from here. He was banished from here.”

“And he was asked to come back.”

“And when he did come back, what was it to? Having to behead his mistress’s corpse while the person who used to be his friend tormented you all while under the control of a higher power. Oh yes, before you all fell under the sway of a rogue goddess and just before his dead mistress turned up to offer you the keys to the kingdom of Hell Incorporated. Did I miss anything?”

“Yes,” Angel told him flatly. “Everything that matters.”

Giles took a deep breath. “You don’t think he might find some peace of mind in England? With familiar things about him?”

“His father’s in England. His father hates him.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t actually…”

“Would you lock someone up in the dark if you liked them?”

Giles winced at the mental picture it gave him but then said carefully, “Watchers have to be trained from an early age to deal with their fears, some treatment that may seem on the surface to be unfeeling or…”

“Is it part of the training never to give them a kind word, or show them any affection, or to ever speak to them for any reason except to tell them how much they’re getting wrong? Wes made Head Boy of the stupid Watchers’ Academy and all his father ever said to him was that there couldn’t have been much competition that year. He spent years turning cartwheels to get that old bastard to give him the time of day and he never did. Wesley needs to be here in LA.”

Although Wesley was now suddenly making a lot more sense to him, Giles stuck to his guns: “In LA where he was tortured by Faith? Where he was blown up? Shot by a zombie policeman? Had his throat slit? Was nearly suffocated by you? Had to cut off one girlfriend’s head and have another die in his arms? Your friend Gunn has been filling me in on what happened to Wesley after he left Sunnydale and, frankly, I think we took better care of him than you did and we didn’t even like him.”

“Well, we like him – a lot, and we’re not giving him up. Especially not to people who don’t like him and never have.”

“I believe that you care about the welfare of your friend, Angel, but I’m looking at what Wesley is now compared with what he was back in Sunnydale and…”

Angel lowered his voice to hiss: “You think that was better – that insecure pompous Council flunky who was ignored by everyone – the butt of everyone’s jokes? Who couldn’t get any respect from anyone who mattered to him? He needs people around him who care about him – that’s us: me, Gunn, and Lorne. We’re what he needs to get better.”

Giles let it go for now. He had already decided that whatever Buffy, Xander, and Willow chose to do, he was going to be staying until he was sure that Wesley was really in the best place and getting the best care. He hadn’t asked to be put _in loco parentis_ for another Watcher and had done his best to avoid taking on the role, but some residual sense of responsibility for the man evidently lingered, and not until he felt a lot happier about the situation could he just waltz off and leave Wesley to the possibly not very tender care of two vampires, an ancient evil demon, a singing not-evil demon, and the man Wesley had quite recently tried to murder…

***

No! No! No…!”

They all jolted out of bed at the sound of those screams. Giles flinging himself halfway across the room before he realized the world hadn’t come into focus and had to stumble back to snatch up his glasses.

By the time he’d pulled on a robe and made his way blearily down the corridor, the others were either already there or still arriving. It was strange to see Spike sprinting up anxiously when it wasn’t Buffy who was the one who was in danger. Giles had presumed the peroxide vampire was incapable of feeling concern for anyone but her.

The door to Angel’s bedroom was open, Lorne inside the room along with Gunn, who were both watching anxiously as Angel tried to soothe Wesley.

“Wes, it was a lie. It didn’t happen…”

Wesley stopped twisting about in Angel’s grip and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “They said you were dust.”

“It was a lie, remember? They were just trying to break you.”

“They said you’d lost the fight. They said you were dead. They said you were in hell.”

“We were in hell.” Angel took the damp cloth Lorne handed to him and pressed it gently to Wesley’s forehead. “We were both in hell together. But we didn’t die. And we got out. Remember, Wes?”

Wesley gripped his hand tightly. “But what if this isn’t real? What if I'm just dreaming it? What if you’re dead?”

“You’re awake.” Angel stroked the wet tangle of hair back from his face. “This isn’t a dream. This is real. The nightmare was the lie and what they told you when we were trapped back on that place.”

“They said you were burning. They said you’d burn for eternity because of what you’d done.”

“Do I feel hot to you?”

Wesley touched his chest and then his face. “No. You’re…room temperature.”

“See any flames?”

“No.” But Wesley still looked unconvinced that this world was the real one.

“Want me to pinch you to prove you’re awake?”

“But I dreamt I was back in the Hyperion all the time when we were in that place. And that Gunn and Lorne were alive and well.”

“They are alive and well.”

“Am I the proof you need?” Illyria walked into the bedroom, graceful and powerful and decidedly blue around the edges. “In your dreams of happiness I would not exist, would I? Fred would stand where I stand.”

Wesley looked up at her and his face cleared. “Yes, that’s true. You were never in my dreams.”

Spike winced. “Poor cow,” he murmured.

“Then this must be real,” Illyria told him. “And the vampire is telling you the truth. You are home again. Now you must learn how to be Wesley again.”

Wesley gazed at her curiously. “Do you know how to be Illyria?”

“I am not what I was. Illyria had its own form. Illyria was not contaminated with human weakness. But you have returned in your own body. You can be who you were.”

“I don’t know who I was.” Wesley looked down at himself in confusion. “I think I never did.”

“We know who you are.” Gunn wrapped his arms around himself as if it was chilly even though the room was perfectly warm. “You’re our friend. We got you back. And we’re keeping you here, okay? You’re not going anywhere else. Not to any hell dimensions or demon worlds or anywhere else. You’re staying here with us in LA.”

“And he doesn’t mean that as a threat, my lamb. That is supposed to be reassuring.”

Wesley smiled at Lorne. “Fred always said that sometimes it was better to be green.”

Giles saw that the green demon jolt a little at that but he managed a smile for Wesley. “We all miss our Fredikins, crumpet, but if she were here right now I just know she’d be telling you to make like a sequel that bucks all the trends and get better.”

Wesley blinked in confusion as he noticed the people in the doorway. “Why are the people from Sunnydale here if it’s not a dream?”

“Do I look a German Shepherd to you?” Xander demanded. “We’re real.”

“If you’re real why are you dressed as a pirate?”

Angel pressed a hand to Wesley’s forehead and winced. “You’ve got a fever again, Wes. I’ll get you something for it.”

“Don’t go.” Wesley caught Angel’s wrist and gripped it. “Angel…”

“I’ll stay,” Angel said at once. “I’ll stay right here.”

“I’ll get the fever medicine.” Willow reassured him. “I’ll get it now. Giles?”

“I’ll help.” 

As they both turned away, Buffy and Xander fell into step behind them. Xander grimaced “So every time Deadboy fought they told Wesley the guy had been dustified?”

Buffy looked back over her shoulder. “Just once there should be a hell dimension where everyone hands out leis and asks you to have a nice day. Is he going to be okay?”

Willow nodded. “We just need to keep giving him the fever medicine. It’s only been a few days, we can’t expect him to throw off that kind of temperature right away.” 

Lorne and Gunn caught up with them. “Wes is burning up and he’s still having the nightmares.”

Willow gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, we know, don’t worry, Gunn. He is getting better, you just have to give him time.”

Gunn looked unconvinced and Lorne handed him his drink. “Eight months in a hell dimension, cupcake – forty-eight hours back home…you do the math.”

Gunn surprised Giles by taking a gulp of the cocktail. “Okay, maybe he isn’t dying.”

“He really isn’t,” Giles reassured him. “And he probably needs people around him who…”

“Aren’t totally paranoid?” Gunn finished off Lorne’s drink and then handed him the empty glass. “Maybe some of us are still working on that.”

It was Xander who slapped Gunn gently on the shoulder. “Hey, you lost almost everyone you knew who wasn’t a god-king or Spike in the space of three months. Trust me, you’re allowed to be paranoid about the one human friend you have left. If it was Willow who’d been lost in a hell dimension and I’d just got her back I’d probably want a baby monitor wired up to her room that I could carry around with me even if Buffy was taking care of her twenty-four-seven.”

Gunn looked at him. “Yeah, that’s a little crazier than even I’d wanna be. Thanks, man, that helped.”

Xander nodded. “That’s what we’re here for and – any time.”

By the time Giles took Wesley the fever medicine, he was dozing in Angel’s arms, the vampire murmuring something to him that sounded a little like a bedtime story, until Giles realized that he was actually talking about past cases.

“And then there was Jhiera and the whole Ko on the back of the neck thing…”

“Did you have sex with her?” Wesley murmured drowsily. “Because Cordy bet me ten dollars that you did and I don’t think I ever paid her.”

“That’s none of your – you two used to take bets on whether or not I slept with the clients…?”

“I always defended your honour,” Wesley insisted, still not opening his eyes. “Of course, I insisted that you would never sleep with Darla however dark you got. I think I still owe Cordelia money for that little wager…”

Angel took the bottle of medicine from Giles and shook it up. “You need to drink this.”

“I don’t want any more demon monkey meat, Angel. I can’t keep it down.”

“This is medicine. It’s nice.”

“You always say it’s nice and it’s always revolting and I’m not hungry. I just want to go to sleep.”

Angel held the bottle to his lips. “Drink it and then you can go to sleep. Come on – two mouthfuls, that’s all.”

Wearily Wesley opened his eyes and then blinked in confusion at their surroundings, but he took the bottle and obediently swallowed down two gulps of medicine, grimacing at the taste. “That’s worse than demon monkey meat.” He looked at Giles warily and then said: “Why do I have to keep dreaming about Sunnydale? I never even liked Sunnydale. Next time I want to dream about Madam Dorion's…”

“Yeah, you and me both, Wes.” As the man slumped asleep against his chest, Angel pulled up the coverlet and then took the bottle from his fingers before he spilled its contents. He handed it back to Giles. “Thank you.

Although Wesley undoubtedly looked very peaceful as long as he was snuggled up against Angel while he slept, Giles still didn’t like this situation. He didn’t like the way Wesley was so dependent upon Angel or how much the vampire seemed to like Wesley being that way; how Angel didn’t think anyone else could look after Wesley and wouldn’t share his care with the rest of them, however many times they offered. If Gunn was paranoid then Giles personally thought that Angel was a candidate for a wraparound jacket and a rubber room. “If you want a break…?” he offered. “I know that Gunn or Lorne would be very happy to watch over him.”

“No, I’m the one he needs.” Angel didn’t even attempt to sound as if he didn’t like things that way. 

Giles nodded and left them to their – apparently – platonic bed-sharing but he did wonder if they were ever going to get the real Wesley back while it suited Angel quite so well for him to stay the man he was at the moment.

***

Wesley awoke to a strange almost-silence. Not the silence of rustling undergrowth in a thorny jungle or the hissing plop of lava pits bubbling; not the screech of alien birds or monkey-like demons with red eyes and curving fangs. There was the tick of a clock; the drip of a tap; and – just too far away to make out any words – the murmur of conversation.

Possibly a fever dream. He put a hand to his forehead and it was cool. None of his wounds were throbbing with any particular intensity either. They ached, certainly, the welts and burns and cuts and bruises and the wincing sear of claw wounds, but there wasn’t that inescapable pulse of infection. 

He blinked a few times and looked around the room. It looked like Angel’s old bedroom back in the Hyperion, but a lot of his fever dreams were centred around the Hyperion so that didn’t really prove anything. 

“Angel…?” he whispered the name cautiously. If they were still on the run in the jungle, it might alert a predator, of course, but it wouldn’t matter if he were in their shared cage while Angel was fighting yet another bout. And if Angel were already dead and he was about to be tossed to some scaly demon as a not very substantial meal then it was never going to matter again. 

“Angel…?”

He heard running footsteps, someone moving upstairs at speed, then the pound of feet on carpeted corridor. If this was a fever dream, the sound effects were very good; none of that muffling of the soundtrack that usually accompanied in his dreams; or the weird echo effect.

“I’m here, Wes. I’m here.”

Angel was across the room in a couple of strides and Wesley found himself gazing up into a familiar face. It was reassuring that Angel still had healing wounds on his face. If he’d been wearing a white suit and was entirely unmarked he would have been forced to assume this was a hallucination. They had both done their share of hallucinating over the past few months; starvation, exhaustion, infected wounds in Wesley’s case, the mindfry of blistering pain, had both sent them right to the edge of sanity more than once.

“Wes.” The bed creaked just the way a bed would and the mattress dipped in a manner that was comfortingly mundane as Angel sat on it. The hand on Wesley’s forehead was cool and familiar. “We’re home. We’re in the Hyperion. There was a portal. Do you remember running for it?”

“Have we had this conversation before?” Wesley asked.

Angel smiled. “A few times.”

“How long has it been since we came back?”

“Couple of days. You had a fever. But you’re getting better.”

“So, it’s real?” Wesley cautiously plucked at the sheets and then reached out to touch Angel’s hand. The vampire was wearing black trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt; he was barefoot and looked as if he had thrown on his clothes casually. Wesley folded back Angel’s left cuff carefully to look for the bite mark Angel had sustained in his last fight. It was almost healed but there were still indentations where the fangs had gone in. If this was a fever dream it deserved to win an award for attention to detail.

“It’s real.” Angel cupped his face in his hand. “I’m real. You’re alive and I’m no deader than I’ve been all the time you’ve known me.”

“Where did the portal come from?” Hope rose in his breast that as this impossible thing was possible perhaps all impossible things were possible. “Did Fred…?”

The flash of pain in Angel’s eyes that turned at once to a flash of pity, told him that some things remained unchanged. “It was Willow,” the vampire said gently. “Fred’s…”

“Still dead.” It always hurt so much worse after confusion or fever led him to believe she was still alive. But there was clarity here now. He could remember her death. Remember her convulsing in his arms. Remember Illyria rising up. “I think I may be sane again.” He licked his lips cautiously, the aniseed aftertaste of fennel unmistakable. “I drank something.”

“From Willow. To combat the fever.” Angel touched his forehead again. “It seems to have worked.”

“Willow’s here?” That was too confusing for him to make sense of at the moment.

“And Buffy, Giles, and Xander. They all came to help get us back. It needed a lot of mojo to get the portal open apparently. Lucky for us that Willow’s a very powerful witch these days.”

“Buffy?” Wesley realized what Angel had said. “Buffy’s here?”

“Yes.”

“Is she okay?” Wesley scanned his face anxiously. “Are you okay?”

Angel nodded. “We’re fine, Wes. Everyone’s fine. You just need to concentrate on getting well.”

“I think I am well,” Wesley admitted. “I’m just not sure if I like it.”

Angel pulled the coverlet over him and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. “You’re not ‘well’, Wes. You’re just not running a temperature of a hundred and four any more. If I get you some soup can you keep it down?”

“I can try. As long as it’s not Heinz tomato soup. I hate that stuff.”

Angel grinned at him. “Oxtail? Minestrone? Leek and potato?”

“Are you mocking my national cuisine?” 

“If I was mocking your cuisine I’d be talking about toad in the hole. Gunn got the soup. I think it’s chicken. Can you stay awake long enough for me to get it?”

Wesley could feel exhaustion pressing on his eyelids again but there was also a hollow in his stomach that was demanding his attention. “Yes.”

“I’ll be quick.” Angel got to his feet, crossed the room and went out of the door.

At once Wesley felt an overwhelming sense of loss. He had to stop himself from calling him back, not caring about the food, just wanting Angel to stay with him. Panic was flaring as he listened to the footsteps disappearing into the distance. Images flashed into his mind of nets cutting into their skin, the slash of demon claws, clubs beating them into submission and in his case unconsciousness. Waking to a dagger-sharp pain in his head, blood in his eyes, tied up naked on a dirt floor with no Angel to be seen, panicking and being struck again for calling out to the vampire; then the sigils being cut and burnt into his skin. Trying not to scream. Failing. More beatings, then finally being dragged by the hair back to a filthy cell and thrown into it. Rolling over to find Angel there, cold and still and bleeding, but not dust, not gone…

“Soup…” 

He smelt it before he saw it, opening his eyes to the realization that he was starving. Seeing Angel, he smiled in relief. “You were quick.”

“I ran.” The vampire smiled back at him gently. “Can you sit up?”

Wesley managed to do so, a little taken aback by how weak he felt, what an effort it was to move.

“Let me help you.” A strange voice.

He started in confusion and then the woman spoke again. “It’s me, Wesley. It’s Buffy. I’m the official tray holder for this meal.”

“Oh.” He became aware that he was naked and quickly checked to see where the sheet was. The coverlet came up to his chest so that wasn’t too bad, he supposed, although he was still disconcerted to have a third person there. It had been just him and Angel for so long that it was difficult to adjust to a world with other people in it who weren’t enemies.

“I can go if you don’t want me to…” She looked at him uncertainly and he focused on her properly, remembering how young she was, and how pretty. She had a nice face. He’d forgotten that in the intervening years. Just remembering her as sarcasm and anger. But her eyes were kind.

“No. It’s fine. Thank you.”

“I get to do the feeding,” Angel said. “Buffy just attends us both.”

“I give good attendance,” she confirmed.

“I can feed myself,” Wesley protested, sitting up a little straighter in the bed, then tugging up the coverlet hastily.

“You can?” Angel looked unconvinced. “Would that be without spilling soup in my bed?”

Wesley raised a hand and noticed how shaky it was, thought about the liquid constitution of soup. “Oh. You wanted a soup- _free_ bed then?”

Angel dug the spoon into the soup which Buffy obligingly held for him. “Smartass, eh? You must be feeling better. Do I need to do the whole little train going into the tunnel thing or are you going to open wide without me needing to ask?”

“That sounds so dirty,” Buffy murmured.

“Filthy,” Wesley agreed.

“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Angel returned easily. “And you, Wes, open your mouth and swallow when I tell you to.”

Wesley decided there were worse things than being sane. If Angel was able to make jokes then they were either imminently about to die and he was trying to keep Wesley’s mind off things – which didn’t seem likely – or the danger was really past. “Are you going to run this pervert routine with everyone?”

Angel scooped the spoon back into the soup. “Yeah, I was planning to make Gunn hold the tray next time. But, hey, Giles would be the funniest.”

“Giles might tell my father.” Wesley opened his mouth for the next spoonful of soup.

“Giles wouldn’t dream of it.” 

For a moment he thought it was his father in the doorway. Wesley swallowed the soup hastily, torn between sitting up straighter and sinking down into the bed and looking as ill as possible in the hope that he could avoid punishment. Then the man stepped out of the contre jour of the doorway and into the room and he saw that it was Rupert Giles.

The man continued easily: “But I have to tell you that we can hear every word downstairs and you’ve even succeeded in ‘grossing out’ Xander and Spike. So, I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“It was nothing.” Angel inclined his head modestly and held up another spoonful of soup. “You have to eat all of this, by the way, as Gunn went out especially to get it and will be sure to tell you that if you don’t finish it.”

“I wasn’t gonna say a word.”

Wesley recognized that silhouette straight away. Unmistakably Gunn. And although he was feeling slightly panicked by having so many people around him, it was also comforting to see so many people he at least knew, and in Gunn’s case, liked. “Thank you for the soup, Charles.”

“You’re welcome. Just make sure you eat it.”

Angel took the opportunity of Wesley opening his mouth to answer to shove another spoonful of soup into him. Wesley swallowed it quickly. “I’m not a toddler, you know. I like soup. I’m hungry and I want to eat it.”

“Good.” Buffy smiled at him. “Because we don’t get our chocolate cake until you do.”

“There’s chocolate cake?” Wesley had thought about chocolate a few times while lost in that hell dimension, but he had almost forgotten how it tasted. Now, he suddenly remembered the exact texture of the thick chocolate on a Mars bar from his tuck box. “I want cake.”

“Soup first,” Angel held out another spoonful.

“But chocolate cake…” Wesley gazed up at him imploringly.

“Oh let him have the cake, Angel,” Gunn said at once. “I hate it when he looks like that.”

“Please, Angel…” Wesley could almost smell the icing on the cake; that thick American frosting that stuck to everything and which he’d always complained about so bitterly in the past when Cordelia let it get dangerously close to his books. Now he wanted to feel it melt on his tongue.

“Okay.” Angel sighed in defeat. “Enough with the eyes, Wes. You can have cake.”

“I’ll get the cake.” Buffy leapt to her feet with alacrity. “And I get to watch him eat it.”

Wesley gazed at her in confusion. “Is there some reason why you would want to…?”

“It’s the stray found in the gutter complex. All women have it,” Giles explained. “Willow wanted to bathe you and now Buffy wants to feed you. Tomorrow they’ll fight over who gets to buy you a new basket.”

“Yes,” Buffy agreed. “But I’ll win because Willow isn’t allowed to use witchcraft on us and I’m stronger than she is.”

As Buffy sped out of the room, taking the tray with her, Wesley felt somewhat exhausted. He slumped back on the pillows and looked up at Angel. “They’re quite…tiring, aren’t they?”

“The Sunnydale crowd?” Angel nodded. “Like watching squirrels do the cha-cha.”

“I remember never really understanding most of what they said.” Wesley laid his head back on the pillow. “It sounded like English but it never seemed to mean what it appeared to on the surface.”

“Well, Americans _and_ teenagers,” Giles conceded with a shrug. “The English language was always going to be an inevitable casualty.”

“We heard that!” Chorused from downstairs.

Wesley closed his eyes and for a moment the jungle loomed, the slash of claws, the bite of the net, but when he opened them again he was still in Angel’s bed, not being dragged anywhere, the sheets cool and clean against his sore skin. “I’m just going to close my eyes…” he murmured.

As he drifted into sleep he heard Buffy say in a disappointed voice: “I wanted to feed him cake.”

“Tomorrow.” Someone who sounded strangely like Rupert Giles from Sunnydale said, “You can feed him cake tomorrow, Buffy.”

As he slipped back into his tangled dreams, Wesley wondered why Buffy would be fighting Ertash demons in a hell dimension instead of minding the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, and what cake had to do with anything.

***

Xander had to admit this place was kind of growing on him. The idea of having a whole hotel at one’s disposal was rather cool, and he liked Gunn. The guy was scarily normal and seemed to understand very well the whole not-having-super-powers-when-everyone-around-you-did thing. Not that Giles had super powers, of course, except for remaining resolutely English in the face of all temptation to be otherwise, but even he could do the occasional magic trick. Today Lorne, Spike and Illyria were all where Illyria was. Not that he was certain where that was but it was perhaps just as well it wasn’t in the lobby as the blue-rinsed demon apparently looked on Wesley as more or less her personal property and at the moment Buffy seemed to be doing the same thing. A cat fight between a slayer and a demon over a convalescent Watcher might well turn ugly.

He had to admit, too, that it was kind of fun to watch Buffy and Willow doing their ‘he followed us all the way home, can we keep him?’ thing with, of all people, stuffy pompous Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Except that Wesley was neither stuffy nor pompous these days; just a little confused and lost, and scarily thin.

It was probably just as well that Buffy had intervened because Angel had been creepily possessive for nearly a week until Buffy had pretty much marched into that bedroom and insisted that Angel shared the taking care of Wesley duties and she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Angel had sulked a little but, as he got Wesley at night, he was letting the rest of them spend short supervised time periods with him during the day, pleasing Buffy and Willow who could then tend to a healing Watcher in a smothering and equally creepy way that neither Giles nor Xander would have tolerated for five minutes.

Angel was healing fast, Wesley a great deal slower, but that just meant he had a longer convalescence and so more time for the women to fuss. Normally, Xander would have baulked at women fussing so much over someone who wasn’t him, but for once he had to admit that Wesley really seemed to need it, and more importantly he seemed totally unused to it. It had been a slow process building up his strength enough for him to be able to get out of bed, but from there he had progressed to a slow struggle down the stairs of the Hyperion to the lobby and the semblance of some normality. Xander liked to think they had all done their bit to try to help him get over his jumpiness. Wesley was still having nightmares about Angel being dead and dusted but although he and Angel were still – rather weirdly – sharing a bed, it was clear that nothing mattress-springy was going on between them. Wes was just kind of disorientated when he came out of a nightmare and Angel was kind of insanely clingy and protective twenty-four-seven. Wesley’s temperature was still inclined to spike back to fever levels, especially if he didn’t get enough rest, but he could keep down his meals much better, and although whenever his temperature went up he had to be reassured all over again that he was back in LA, for the most part he was fairly normal. 

Being in bed had afforded him a little bit of protection from the excesses of the female fussing but it had only been a matter of time before they went to full strength mother hen mode, and now that he was convalescent, getting saner every day, and strong enough to be benevolently tyrannized, there was nothing to hold them back. Wesley seemed bewildered by Buffy’s attitude to him, giving her a deer in headlights look that unfortunately – as it made his eyes look even bigger in his thin face – made her crank up the protective fussing thing to Mach Ten.

Every time Buffy made Wesley a sandwich he looked at it as if he’d never seen one before in his life, turning it over cautiously on the plate as if he was expected to perform a ritual before tasting it.

“Um…”

“It’s food, Wesley,” Buffy said helpfully. “As in for eating. You put it in your mouth and chew on it until swallowing feels like the next logical step.”

“Has it occurred to you he might not actually be hungry?” Giles looked up from his book. He had taken over the office in the Hyperion and seemed to be enjoying reading his way through all of Wesley’s books, a pile of which he now had at the front desk. “It was only two hours ago that Willow spoon fed him something gooey and chocolatey with no apparent food value.”

“Devil’s Food Cake is all food value,” Xander assured the man. “It’s the ultimate food.”

As Buffy continued to coax Wesley into taking a bite out of the sandwich she’d made him, Giles added, “I’m not clear why Angel isn’t getting an equivalent amount of fussing.”

“It’s the blood.” Xander explained. “It isn’t interesting enough. You want to feed up Angel or Spike you get a choice of offering them blood or…blood. With Wesley there are an infinite variety of sticky foodstuffs to tempt him with.”

“This is a chick thing, right?” Gunn came to join them by the reception desk.

“Definitely,” Xander confirmed. “They almost came to blows yesterday about who got to cut his hair.”

“Who won?” Giles enquired.

“Buffy is cutting Angel’s and Willow is doing Wesley’s. They have this afternoon scheduled for it. Then they get to buy Wesley clothes.”

Wesley evidently heard that because he looked around in confusion. “I have clothes. Gunn, don’t I have clothes?”

“No jammies,” Buffy explained. “Convalescing people need jammies. Navy blues ones, preferably.”

“Or tartan.” Willow came into the room with a towel and a pair of scissors. “And there is the whole robe question.”

“This is ridiculous.” Giles marked the page in his book with a neatly folded kleenex. “Everyone knows that pyjamas should be striped.”

“But I don’t think I need…” Wesley noticed the scissors. “Is that for cutting my hair…? Because I used to go to a hairdresser on Fifth and…”

“You can’t walk that far,” Willow reminded him. “And you don’t want to go on having the hippy hair, do you? I bet it tickles your ears.”

“These women are unbelievable,” Xander observed. “Someone really needs to buy them a puppy and soon.”

“I dunno. It’s kind of cute watching Wes get fussed over.” Gunn leant back against the reception desk and grinned. “He hasn’t had that since Cordelia…”

“I never really pictured Cordelia as the fussing type,” Giles admitted.

Gunn shrugged. “Well, you know. It was kind of tough-love fussing. ‘Eat something, Wesley, now, I mean it, because you looking like that is just going to make _my_ hips look wide’, ‘Do you have any clothes that _don’t_ make you look gay?’, ‘Okay, no more fighting big stinky clawed demons for Wesley until he learns not to bleed on my blouse afterwards. Is that clear?’”

“That’s my girl,” said Xander fondly. 

“Those two fought like cat and dog. Drove me buggo.”

“They were all smoochy and ‘oh Wesley you have the sexiest accent’ when I knew them,” Xander observed. 

“Yeah, well, they were well over that when I knew them and definitely into the brother-sister thing, only with added squabbling.”

“Sit back, Wesley,” Willow said in the kind of soothing voice that would personally have sent Xander scampering for cover. Wesley didn’t look too soothed either, but he had come back so spacey, starving, and used to doing what Angel told him that he hadn’t really regained the knack of rebellion yet. The women, of course, were exploiting that ruthlessly.

“Angel!” Buffy was using her best ‘brooking no argument’ tone and Xander wasn’t exactly surprised when the vampire sloped out of the office, looking trapped.

“Yes. What?”

“You know what. Now sit down next to Wesley.” She pointed to the chair that had been placed next to the ex-Watcher.

“I can pay for a haircut,” Angel protested.

“You can pay me in chocolate cake.” Buffy pointed at the chair. “Sit.”

Willow said, still-soothingly, “I’ll have you looking just the way you used to in no time, Wesley, I promise.”

“And she can actually make good on that,” Xander promised. “Because if she snips off part of your ear she can repair it with a superglue spell.”

“Don’t listen to Xander,” Willow reassured him. “There will be no snippage of ears. Or other body parts in fact.”

Willow dipped the comb she was holding into the bowl of warm water placed between her and Buffy, ran it through Wesley’s hair and then began snipping. 

“Poor Wes,” Gunn sighed. “That was definitely a flinch.”

“Well, let’s face it, it would be difficult for Buffy and Willow to make those two look worse than they do now. Although it could be fun to see if they can manage it.” Xander passed Gunn a beer and they clashed the bottles together idly.

“You don’t mind your friends being ritually humiliated in the front lobby then?” Giles enquired.

Gunn shrugged. “I figure if your friends are going to be around for a while, my friends had better get used to it. Wes has never learned how to stand up to women – he was trained up by Cordelia that way. And as Buffy’s a slayer and Angel’s a vampire I figure he doesn’t do what she says he gets dusted.”

“So you were all aware of Angel’s history with Buffy?”

“Oh yeah.” Gunn took another sip of beer. “Cordy and Wes actually acted it out for us.”

The sudden cessation of snipping made Xander, Gunn and Giles look up. “Did you get a main artery already?” Xander enquired.

“‘Acted it out for us’?” Buffy echoed in a dangerously calm sort of voice. “Would you happen to remember any of it?”

“Wes?” Angel looked at him. “Want to share with the nice slayer?”

“Memory loss,” Wesley said hastily. He twisted his head round to give Willow a full on puppy dog eyes look that Xander had to admit had his own and Angel’s beaten hollow. “Don’t remember.”

Willow said hastily, “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, Buffy. And it was probably Cordelia’s idea anyway.”

Xander took another sip of beer. “Sucker.”

Gunn cleared his throat before saying melodramatically: “‘Oh, Buffy – I love you so much I almost forgot to brood…!’ Wasn’t that how it went, Wes?”

“Sorry. Still drawing a complete blank, I’m afraid. Thanks very much for the haircut, Willow. It’s awfully kind of you.”

“Yeah, keep sucking up to Willow, Watcher Guy,” Xander told him. “You’re going to need a witch to hide behind any minute now.”

Buffy said fiercely to Angel: “You let them make fun of…?”

“I wasn’t around. And when I walked in on them doing their little play, I told them to bite me. And I wouldn’t share with Cordelia even though she really wanted me to.”

“Then he demanded ice cream,” Gunn confirmed. “It was very manly.”

“You’re pathetic,” Buffy told Angel. She pointed her scissors at Wesley. “And you’re lucky I don’t take you for a slayer workout reminder course.”

Wesley gave Buffy a ‘poor scared little just back from a hell dimension me’ look that Xander suspected was only half real, but it worked. Buffy looked at Wesley for a moment and then sighed. “I’ll let you off just this once as I was pretty much a total bitch to you the whole time you were in Sunnydale. But, Willow, make sure you get his hair to do that spiky thing you said was so cute when you saw him last time.”

“You thought Wesley was cute when you saw him before?” Xander demanded in disbelief.

“That unshaven insomniac just-been-thrown-out-of-a-window look does it for you then, does it, Willow?” Gunn enquired.

“It was a spasm,” she insisted. “It passed.”

“Why do women like skinny guys anyway?” Xander looked down at his own not-skinny frame. “I mean, _they’re_ skinny, so you’d think they’d want a contrast.”

“Skinny?” Buffy demanded frostily.

“Slender and perfectly formed was what I said, Buff,” Xander assured her hastily. “I don’t know where you’re getting ‘skinny’ from. Wes is skinny. You’re so not.”

“So, now you’re saying I’m fat?”

Xander darted Giles a ‘help me’ look but the man shrugged. “You dug yourself into that pit all by yourself. You get yourself out.”

“Buffy, you’re a vision of radiant loveliness,” Xander said hastily. “And I worship at your feet.”

She smiled triumphantly. “That’s better.”

Buffy concentrated on Angel’s hair for a moment, eyes narrowed as she assessed it. Xander thought it was downright disturbing that Buffy had evidently memorized Angel’s hair so completely that she could not only picture it in her mind she could actually recreate it. Because that was what she was doing. Turning it back from scary wild hair into even scarier sticking up fashionably hair. She even had the mousse there ready, he noticed.

“So, you actually _liked_ Angel’s hair then, Buff?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “There are people who don’t?”

Angel looked impossibly smug and Xander rolled his eyes. “Love really is blind, isn’t it?”

Willow was looking anxious as she worked on Wesley’s hair. “Gunn, do you remember what Wesley’s hair was like before?”

“Short,” Gunn supplied helpfully.

She gave him a panicked look. “That’s it?”

“Brown?” Gunn offered.

“Do you need mousse?” Buffy asked.

“Wesley’s doesn’t need to stick up.”

“To stop it sticking up.”

Willow looked at Wesley’s face. “It would look kind of cute if it did.”

Buffy also gazed at him for a moment. “It would look _so_ cute.”

Giles rolled his eyes. “Oh for goodness sake, you two. Could you leave the poor man the tattered remnants of _some_ dignity?”

“Later we get to buy him clothes.” Buffy apparently had no shame – or mercy. “And to make ‘aww’ing noises in the store where complete strangers can hear us.”

Xander took a swig of beer before giving Wesley a sympathetic look. “I bet that hell dimension’s not looking quite so bad now, is it?”

“You can’t take Wesley out the way he looks right now,” Angel said with authority. “Wait until the bruises fade or people will assume you’re perverted sadists.”

Xander looked at Gunn. “Buffy and Willow, Bondage Mistresses of Pain. I kind of like it.”

“I’m kind of right there with you,” Gunn admitted. “Do you think they have handcuffs?”

“Buffy did used to keep Spike chained up in her basement. I always suspected she was a spanker too.”

Gunn was looking at Buffy with renewed interest. “She did. Wow. That’s…Is it me or did it just get hot in here?”

“I still don’t understand why I need more clothes,” Wesley put in plaintively. “Did you burn my clothes when I was away? Because some of them were very expensive.”

“No, we kept them, Wes,” Gunn assured him. “But the girls don’t want to dress you up in Ralph Lauren polo shirts. They want you to wear jammies so they can ‘aww’ over you.”

“We don’t really need Wesley along to buy those do we?” Buffy turned to Willow triumphantly. “We just buy ones in the right size and then make him wear them. Same with the robe.”

“But I’m convalescent now,” Wesley insisted. “I’m wearing normal clothes.”

“But you shouldn’t be. Because you still have all your owies.”

Giles ran a hand through his hair. “What is it about an attractive man having injuries that makes women respond to him as if he’s two years old? It is the most inexplicable phenomenon.”

“You think Wesley’s attractive?” Xander put his head on one side to look at Wesley. “Don’t you think he’s kind of skinny?”

“The girls at Wolfram & Hart all thought he was a looker,” Spike offered, coming in, sipping a cup of blood. “They were always saying what a pity Wes was gay.”

Wesley looked at him in shock. “I’m not gay.”

“Well, they thought you were.”

“Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t?”

“How was I supposed to know? Every time I saw you, you were with Angel, and with him being such a big nancy I assumed you were too.”

“Sitting right here,” Angel pointed out indignantly.

“The girls said that ‘poor Nina’ was wasting her time with Angel because everyone knew he and Mister Wyndam-Pryce were an item and what a pity it was that Mister Wyndam-Pryce batted for the other team when he had such lovely dress sense. I thought they had inside information.”

Angel and Wesley exchanged an indignant look. “Well, they didn’t,” Angel said shortly. “And where’s Illyria?”

Spike waved a hand. “Lorne’s trying to get her to dig Aretha – I tried to tell him he was wasting his time but he’s convinced she’s got to have some soul-sister vibe in there somewhere.”

“They did sound very sure,” Gunn admitted apologetically. “The girls in the office. A couple of times I tried to correct them on the whole Wes being gay thing but they just laughed at me and said I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the only people who didn’t know Wes was gay were the men who wanted to sleep with him, which was when I started worrying about that time when we were wrestling and how I maybe enjoyed it a little bit too much… And then I decided not to think about any of those things ever again.”

Wesley rolled his eyes at him. “Good move, Charles. Could you try not talking about them either?”

Spike held up a hand. “See, I knew Wes was gay straight off, so that proves I’m not one of the ones who wants to sleep with him. I knew Angelus was too. The first time I met him I thought ‘what an unbelievable ponce’ – I remember it distinctly.”

“But you did have sex with Angelus,” Giles pointed out. “On numerous occasions. There are several eye witness accounts – from survivors of your various massacres – of your Bacchanalian revelries after you’d all sated yourselves on the blood of innocents.”

Spike blanched. “That’s invasion of privacy, that is. I could sue. And you can’t believe eyewitness accounts anyway. Everyone knows people are too traumatized to remember anything accurately after a vampire attack. Me and Dru, and Angelus and Darla, that’s what they would have seen – they were just confused and probably hysterical.”

Angel grimaced apologetically at Wesley. “I did some bad things in my time.”

“Well, yes.” Wesley nodded sagely. “Darla for one, and Spike apparently for another.”

Buffy was still looking between Gunn and Wesley with great interest, apparently oblivious to the rest of the conversation. “You wrestled? Proper sweaty wrestling? Was there oil?”

“No,” Wesley protested. “We were fully clothed, unoiled, and under the influence of a spell of Lorne’s which made us think we were seventeen.”

“So, you used to wrestle with guys a lot when you were seventeen?”

“No…” Wesley gave Gunn a reproachful look. “This conversation is entirely your fault.”

“It’s one of Buffy’s core fantasies,” Willow explained. “Angel and Spike wrestling naked. There’s usually oil. Sometimes mud. Once…jello. It’s another of those mental images that occasionally makes me question my lesbian credentials but only for a moment.”

Angel and Spike looked at one another before both scowling at Buffy who showed no signs of shame at all. 

“Pervert,” Xander told her loftily.

“You and Angel are actually sleeping together,” Giles pointed out to Wesley. “Is it really so surprising that people might jump to…certain conclusions?”

“We’re only sleeping together in a non-sexual way,” Angel retorted.

“There’s a non-sexual way to sleep together?” Gunn enquired.

Spike gazed across at Buffy. “Yes, there is. And it’s the best way sometimes. Comforting. Makes you feel like you matter as a person. Like you’re someone.”

Xander looked at him sideways. “Man, Spike, you’ve been out of the dating game for a while, haven’t you?”

“Isn’t it ironic that with all this talk about sex there is no way any of us are going to be getting any from any of the people here?” Willow observed.

“You had to say that out loud?” Xander demanded.

“I could have said something about Buffy indulging in a naughty threesome with Angel and Spike, but I didn’t. That would have been wrong.”

“Angelus was always looking for a threesome with Faith and Wes,” Gunn observed conversationally.

“No, he wasn’t,” Angel said quickly.

“Oh, my mistake. That ‘It’s never just about you and me, Faith, Wes’ll always be in the middle’ was about something else, was it?”

“He meant as a bargaining chip in hostage negotiations.”

“Funny how Angelus always got a hard-on during the kind of hostage negotiations that involved pulling Wes in really tight against his body…” Gunn murmured innocently.

“Was _that_ what that was?” Wesley looked at Angel in surprise. “I really did think you had a gun in your pocket.”

“I knew it!” Gunn punched the air. “The real reason Angelus never killed Wesley confirmed.”

Angel narrowed his eyes. “You’re so close to being dead right now.”

Buffy and Willow exchanged a guilty look. “You too?” Buffy offered quietly.

Willow nodded. “‘Fraid so.”

“What?” Xander enquired.

Buffy grimaced. “It’s just… Angel, Wesley and Faith… not entirely lacking in hotness as a concept. Not that I would… There would be no peeking, of course, because that would be wrong but as mental images go….”

“It was _Angelus_ , Wesley, and Faith,” Angel pointed out grimly. “So step one in that little ménage a trios would have been Angelus turning Faith into a vampire and step two would have been him doing lots of very non consensual things to Wesley, probably before peeling his skin off slowly with a razor blade.”

“You’re really killing the mood,” Buffy told him. “Let me have my fantasies and you have yours. It’s just that mine would be…better.”

Giles looked at her in disbelief. “Are there any males in this room you don’t want to see naked, covered in oil and doing something sticky to another equally naked and oil-covered male?”

“Well, you, of course. That would be squicky on so many levels.”

Spike shrugged. “I dunno. Giles and Wes – gotta lot in common, haven’t they? They’re both kind of boring and tweedy and a bit mentally unstable and don’t get laid very often. That would give them some common ground. I could see them as a couple.”

“Me too,” Willow admitted. As both men glared at her she amended quickly. “Not for the reasons Spike said. Just because… You’re both Watchers and…English so you could talk about…cricket together and things and it would be sweet.”

“If this conversation doesn’t end now I’m going to put out my other eye myself,” Xander exclaimed. “No more of the homo-enough-already. You girls are sick!”

Buffy said: “I have four words for you, Xander – Willow. Kennedy. Tongue. Stud.” She snipped at Angel’s hair triumphantly, put down the scissors, picked up the mousse and ran her fingers through his dark locks with what looked like professional aplomb. Xander had to admit that the end result was Angel with the same scary hair he’d always had. She whipped off the sheet around his shoulders and invited applause. When no one did she rolled her eyes impatiently. “Come on. It’s a masterpiece.”

“You made it look like it did before,” Spike pointed out. “No one here likes the way it looked before except for you and Angel.”

“I like it,” Wesley said hastily.

“You’re just scared of Buffy,” Spike said.

“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “But at least I’m man enough to admit it.”

“Wesley gets a cookie,” Buffy said smugly. “Because sometimes it’s smart to be scared. No cookie for Spike.”

Xander held up a hand. “If I say that you made it look just the way it used to look and _don’t_ add that I always thought Angel’s hair made him look like a complete freak, do I get a cookie?”

Buffy considered the point for a moment. “No. Will, have you finished?”

“I’m not sure.” Willow examined Wesley’s hair anxiously. “Do you think I could use a little spell to tidy it up?”

“How many ears does he have left, Willow?” Xander enquired comfortingly. “That’s the main thing.”

“Gunn?” Willow gave the man a begging look. “Does this look right?”

“Looks short and brown to me, Willow. I think you got it.”

Buffy gave Wesley a cookie and a mirror, putting the first into his hand and holding the other in front of him. “It’s perfect. It’s all interestingly tousled in an ‘I’m too cool and rogue demon huntery to run a comb through it or shave’ kind of way.”

Willow beamed. “That’s just the look I was going for.”

“Well, you’ve got it.” Buffy held the mirror up for Wesley. “Didn’t Willow get it right, Wesley? And remember who supplies the cookies around here.”

Wesley darted a fearful glance at his reflection and then looked relieved. “Oh. That actually looks like me again. Thank you, Willow.” He felt his chin. “And I do shave. Just…not every day.”

Xander nodded sagely. “Probably saw Miami Vice at an impressionable age.” 

“I told Wes and Gunn that they looked like Crocket and Tubbs and they just looked blank,” Spike complained. 

“We didn’t know what you were talking about. We still don’t. Gunn was fighting vampires from the age of twelve and I was studying to be a Watcher. We didn’t get a lot of time for popular culture.”

Willow turned to Buffy. “He even sounds just like Giles. Do you think we should matchmake?”

“Willow…” Giles warned ominously. “Remember I still have a direct line to a very powerful coven of witches.”

“That sounds very Devil Rides Out, doesn’t it?” Spike observed to Angel. “I can just see Giles summoning the Goat of Mendes while witches cavort around naked.”

“It’s not that kind of a coven,” Giles said wearily.

Xander sighed. “That’s a pity because the image of witches cavorting around naked…” Catching Willow’s eye he amended hastily: “…is just so stereotypical and wrong. I never believed those engravings. And the woodcuts on pages 57, 296, and 531 of that book of Giles’, I never believed those either on any of my numerous viewings of them.”

Gunn raised an eyebrow. “Having the Sunnydale crew to visit really does up the pervert ratio, doesn’t it?”

“The IQ level is taking a bit of a beating though,” Angel murmured.

“Oh, so you don’t think Giles is smarter than Spike?” Buffy demanded. 

“The waffle iron is smarter than Spike. That isn’t the point. You and Willow may have aced your SATs but all you’ve done since you got here is fuss over Wesley like the poor guy is a cocker spaniel.”

Buffy pouted. “It’s fun.”

“Not for him.”

“He’s not here to have fun. He’s here to be fussed over – whether he likes it or not. And anyone who gets between me and _my_ fun gets no cookies and possibly a stake in the heart. Is that clear?”

Angel and Spike exchanged a worried look. “Very clear.”

“Couldn’t be clearer.” Spike gave Wesley an apologetic look. “Sorry, mate, you’re on your own.”

“But I’m better now. I’m well again. I’m…”

“Still owied up.”

Wesley looked at Buffy in disbelief. “You can’t possibly think that’s a verb?”

She folded her arms. “Let’s recap, shall we? Who in this room has Slayer strength and who has lots and lots of bruises?”

“Angel…” Wesley cast a begging look at the vampire who automatically took a step forward.

“Buffy, couldn’t you let him…?”

“No. He has to do as he’s told and be fussed over until he’s better. It will be character building for Wesley and fun for me and Willow.” She pointed at Wesley imperiously. “You need to go to bed now and rest and Willow and I need to buy you jammies.”

Wesley looked up at the ceiling and sighed in resignation. “Does anyone know how to open a portal to a hell dimension?”

“You do need to rest,” Angel told him gently.

“Nonsense, I’m…” Wesley got to his feet and swayed, face paling to an even whiter shade. Buffy caught his arm at once. “Perfectly well,” he finished unconvincingly.

“Wes, Angel has more colour than you do and he doesn’t have a pulse,” Gunn pointed out.

Angel was already looping Wesley’s arm around his shoulders and supporting him with an arm around his waist, expression anxious. “Are you getting that sloshing sound in your ears again? Do you need glucose? Iron?”

“Lying down isn’t sounding like such a bad idea,” Wesley admitted faintly.

Angel helped him up the stairs while they all watched their slow progress. Xander shook his head and took another swig of beer. “It’s all fun and games until someone breaks a nail.”

“See, still convalescent,” Buffy said triumphantly. “The man needs jammies.”

 

Angel took most of Wesley’s weight as they made their way back to the bedroom. It was a little scary, although not unexpected, the way Wesley’s energy tended to run through the soles of his feet after about an hour of being up and about. It was frustrating for him, but it did at least prevent him from overtaxing himself, his body’s way of insisting that he rested.

“Is Illyria…?” Wesley winced. “I have a feeling I treated her rather badly. There were so many gaps in my memory.”

“She claims not to have human feelings, remember?” Angel had never liked Illyria and he wasn’t going to start changing his mind now. “Humans are dust motes and mayflies and she’s so far above them that they’re just ants to her. Except for you, who, for some reason, she has a bit of a thing for.”

“That’s not very grammatical,” Wesley murmured.

“You need to undress.” Angel arrested his graceful fall towards the bed. “You don’t have to sleep in your clothes anymore, remember?”

“Oh yes.” Wesley looked down at his shirt and jeans and sighed. “Perhaps Buffy has a point about those pyjamas.” 

Angel had to unbutton and unzip him and more or less peel him out his clothes, so low had Wesley’s energy levels fallen during his time up. “From now on, you can stay up for an hour at a time and that’s it.”

“Don’t you start nagging, too.”

“Hey.” Angel gazed intently into his eyes. “Remember, I know what you went through in that place.”

“It wasn’t so bad.” Freed from his clothes, Wesley crawled gratefully under the covers. “You were there…”

He was asleep as his head hit the pillow. Angel bent down and stroked a hand through his hair; it felt strange to feel it clean and short again after so long that it had been tangled and too long; he almost missed the familiar texture of those dreadlocks at the back. He suspected Willow had worked some kind of untangling spell on them when she’d been removing the sigils; a pain relief spell as well. 

“How is the one called Wesley?”

He felt that familiar chill at Illyria’s presence. This must be what it was like for humans when he showed up without a reflection to announce him – a demon with no scent, no warmth, no sound. But when he turned to look, her gaze was fixed on Wesley wistfully.

“Still tired but getting better.”

Illyria came into the room, head tilted, unblinking pale blue eyes always focused on Wesley; her thin body in its leather clothing even less of an indicator of her true strength than Buffy’s slender form.

The glance she darted at Angel was suspicious and hostile. “Why do you share a bed chamber with him? Is he your catamite now? Do you use him for your pleasure?”

Angel glowered at her, not troubling to hide his dislike. “I share a bed with him because he has nightmares that only I can help him with, because only I was there with him and understand what his nightmares are about.”

She flinched. “It is wrong that demons should be trapped inside the heads of humans.”

“In this world they’re not.” Angel was glad to see Giles in the doorway, as he had often been glad to see Giles in recent days, the man quietly intervening when Wesley had truly had enough, or being there to lend a hand or a word of advice when Angel was fretting over his recovery. “In this world they’re our way of working through the conflicts in our subconscious mind, dealing with grief and fear and love and hate.”

“Then these nightmares are unstable and deceptive.” Illyria crossed to the bed and gazed down at Wesley with something that was almost tenderness. “We were not enemies when he left.”

“We’re not enemies, Illyria,” Wesley murmured, although Angel wasn’t sure if he was even awake. “We’re allies of a sort.”

She sat upon the bed and reached out tentatively to touch his face. “There is heat where the skin is discoloured; you heal so slowly. How could you ever have come to rule this world?”

“A mass extinction wiped out our nearest competitor leading to the rise of the mammals,” Wesley mumbled into the pillow, going into auto-teach mode apparently even from the depths of sleep. “And changes of habitat caused the ape-like ancestors of homo erectus to make their way down from the trees, the need to see approaching predators leading to walking upon two legs, freeing up the hands to increase dexterity, the fashioning of tools leading to…”

She bent and pressed her mouth against his, fierce and yet still tender. Angel barely resisted the urge to punch her hard in the head, because it might feel like Fred’s lips against his, rather than the demon who had killed her, and it might undo all that careful sanity he had worked to keep inside Wesley’s occasionally fragile head. She pulled away from the kiss as if ashamed. “Is this all you have evolved to become?” she whispered angrily. “Unstable creatures, driven by hormones and strange fancies? Your weakness is a contagion. It contaminates even the strong.”

Angel took her by the arm and pulled her away from him. “Illyria. Get over yourself. You stole a human body when you decided to come back into the world, of course it’s going to affect the way your…essence manifested itself this time around. Just as Wesley in a hell dimension couldn’t hang onto everything he was in this world. We adapt to survive. He needed to be a little insane over there just as he needed to be a little insane after you killed the woman he loved and he found out I’d taken away half of his most important memories. Now he needs to be normal. He needs people who want to fuss over him and give him cookies. He doesn’t need the blue-haired god-king of the universe pontificating at him while wearing his dead lover’s corpse as a skin. Got it?”

She looked down her beautifully proportioned nose at him. “You speak out of jealousy. You have always wanted Wesley as your own. Your disciple. Your follower. Yours to command. Always you have desired that he should love only you.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from ‘bow down before me, o minions of the earth’ girl. In case it’s slipped your mind, you killed Wesley; stabbed him in the back when he was trying to save your life.”

“And it bothers you, doesn’t it? That he lied to you to protect me…?”

“Now isn’t the time,” Giles said sharply. “And it certainly isn’t the place. Wesley needs his sleep.”

“Giles is right,” Angel told her shortly. “Get out.”

“Why may you watch over him but I may not?”

“Because – news flash – this is my bedroom, not yours.”

“It is because you desire to make him entirely yours. Your motives are not disinterested.”

“Out!” Giles said. “Both of you.”

“It’s my bedroom!” Angel protested.

“I don’t care. Wesley’s my responsibility. He’s exhausted and he needs to rest. Something he can’t do while you two are playing the Caucasian Chalk Circle over his head.”

Illyria rose to her full height, gazing at Giles disdainfully. “What is this circle you speak of? Is there a ritual that needs to be performed?”

Giles ushered them both out of the room, Illyria lofty, Angel sulky, closed the door on Wesley and said quietly, “It’s a play by Brecht. Two women dispute over which should keep a little boy they both love, one of them his true mother. It’s agreed that they place him in a chalk circle upon the ground, each takes hold of him and whoever pulls him from the circle can keep him. The mother, however, loves him too much to pull him with all her strength, fearing he will be torn in two.” He looked between them. “Wesley is slowly getting better but he has enough conflicts of his own to process without having to deal with yours as well.”

“You speak like him. Are you of the same tribe?”

“You could put it like that, yes.”

“And as an elder of his tribe you consent that this vampire should be his protector and bedmate?”

Giles looked at Angel and said quietly, “I consent.”

Illyria turned away. “Wesley has told me that I must accept the customs of this world even when they are foolish. If even the elders of his tribe think the vampire is trustworthy then I may concede my claim to his. But it should be remembered that Wesley himself lost his trust for you after you betrayed him to the Wolf Ram and Hart for the sake of your own kin.”

She moved away, decisive and graceful, and Angel rolled his eyes. “As demons go I really wish Illyria would.”

“What did she mean?” Giles demanded. “When did you betray Wesley?”

“I was trying to protect him as well as Connor. There were memories that weren’t doing him any good.”

“Of when he tried to save your baby and ended up losing him? I remember you didn’t take it well.”

“I’d lost my _son_ , Giles. I was mad with grief. My baby boy had just been taken into a hell dimension from which as far as I knew there was no coming back.”

“I wish Wesley had contacted me over that business. I’m sure it wasn’t good for him to be alone. These are the memories you took from Wesley? This is the betrayal Illyria speaks of?”

“Those and a whole lot more. Everything to do with Connor I took from him. No guilt, no responsibility, no memory that he and I were ever anything except friends.”

“A lie,” Giles said coldly.

“A kind lie.” Angel shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. Connor had lost it. He was over the edge. He was going to kill himself, Cordelia, and a whole lot of innocent bystanders. I couldn’t let that happen. I made the deal with Wolfram & Hart and…”

“I lost my integrity, Wes lost his sanity, and Fred lost her life.”

They both turned to find Gunn standing in the corridor. “The only winner from that deal was Connor, Angel. That’s the reality. When it came to him or us, you chose him. And I don’t even blame you for wanting him to have a new life at any cost. But I still don’t get why you couldn’t let us keep our memories of him.”

“It sounds as if Illyria isn’t the only one around here who likes to play god.” Giles gazed at Angel levelly. “Perhaps you were trying to protect them from themselves, but also from the memories of how you had ill-used them.”

“I told Wes things were okay between us,” Angel told him shortly. “I sought him out and I told him that. I never mentioned what he’d done again. We’ve never discussed it since. He never told me he was sorry for taking Connor and I never told him that I was sorry for trying to kill him. It’s water under the bridge.”

Gunn met his gaze. “We are our memories, Angel, and you left us floating in hostile waters without a compass. We lost ourselves because we weren’t ourselves any more; only the parts of us you chose to leave.”

“Wes went crazy _after_ he got his memories back.”

“He’d already worked through those events, Angel. You weren’t protecting him. Just laying up trouble. But that’s the past and in the present you’re the guy who kept him alive in a hell dimension and who he needs now more than he needs the rest of us.”

“Hey…” They turned to find Willow and Buffy standing at the end of the corridor weighed down with shopping bags. The redheaded witch was frowning. “We leave the hotel for a few hours and when we come back it’s all angry and accusations –”

“Illyria was here,” Angel said. “She’s always bad news.”

Giles said, “It seems Angel and Illyria have a grudge match over Wesley. Both think the other is an evil bitch with a god complex. Both have something of a point.”

“Hey!” Angel protested.

Gunn reached out and hit his fist lightly against Giles’ hand in approval, before heading off.

Willow glowered at Angel. “Well, I don’t think you should be filling the hotel with bad vibes when Wesley is so sensitive to his surroundings. He needs to be recovering in a place of positive energy and…”

“Good vibrations,” Buffy supplied.

Giles looked at her in disbelief. “You think playing old Beach Boys hits is going to be just the tonic he needs?”

“You could be quiet now,” she told him. “In fact there could be no one speaking but Willow and I for quite long periods of time and that would be only of the good.”

“Someone else with a god complex,” Giles murmured. “I wonder if it’s contagious?”

As they headed for Angel’s bedroom, Angel caught Willow’s arm. “He’s asleep.”

She held up their shopping bags. “But we have jammies!”

“He can wear then when he wakes up. I promise I’ll even make him wear the robe that you’re bound to have bought to go with them – as long as it isn’t pink or in any way fluffy.”

“It’s blue and warm,” Buffy returned. “And he’ll look really cute in it.”

Giles sighed. “Do try to remember he’s a grown man, Buffy. The poor chap has enough identity and self-esteem issues as it is without you entirely undermining his sense of self.”

“I’ll put up with you buying him clothes,” Angel added. “But you don’t get to dress him.”

Buffy pouted. “Angel gets all the fun.”

“One of the benefits of being sent to hell twice. I get to see my friend’s scar tissue before anyone else, not to mention count every rib. Lucky me.”

Buffy and Willow looked at one another and sighed then handed over the shopping bags.

“We were in a happy pyjama-buying place,” Willow reproached him.

“Yeah, you really know how to bring the brood in,” Buffy added.

“He’s a vampire with a soul, Buffy,” Giles sighed. “What do you expect from him? A cabaret act?”

“Lorne’s a demon. He can still mix a neat cocktail and perform a rousing medley of show tunes.”

“I suspect that as demons go, Lorne is probably a one-off.”

“I certainly am and accept no substitutes.”

Turning around once again, Giles thought he was going to get a permanent crick in his neck if people kept arriving from different ends of the corridor. 

Lorne plucked the shopping bags from Angel. “ _I’m_ going to check on Wesley. I may sing him a lullaby. Either way I’ll be sending out positive vibes, a total absence of brooding, and, unlike some people in this corridor who really ought to know better, I won’t be trying to sneak a peek at his naked body.”

“I don’t –” Angel began and then realized that it was Willow and Buffy who were shuffling their feet and looking guilty under the force of Lorne’s glare. “Fine.” He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. You go and keep watch over Wes – just don’t let Illyria in there or she’ll be pawing at him again.”

As Angel went off, Lorne shook his head. “Those two have serious sharing issues.” He held up the shopping bags. “I’m sure you’ve shopped wisely and well, my cherubs. And in a few short hours you get the pay-off of seeing Wesley all warm and clean and snug in his jammikins. Until then, this corridor is a no fly zone. Wes needs his sleep and you all need to leave him the hell alone.”

Giles found himself shooed back down the corridor in the company of a despondent Buffy and Willow; Gunn, Illyria and Angel presumably all having taken themselves off to other parts of the Hyperion to brood. Thinking of the various conflicts he’d just witnessed, Giles shook his head. “I swear these people make even the Scoobies look sane…”

*** 

Illyria had been gazing at Wesley fixedly for at least ten minutes. Gunn had been surreptitiously timing her. Angel was aware of her doing it too and, unlike Gunn, was getting increasingly irritated by her. Angel had got way too used to having Wes all to himself, in Gunn’s opinion, and needed to learn how to share. Gunn was more fascinated by the way Illyria didn’t seem to need to blink. Perhaps it was just because Illyria had saved him from a hell dimension, just to get in good with Wes, or maybe because, despite wearing the face of their dead friend, it felt like there was an important part of Illyria, not just Fred, that had the hots for Wesley, but either way he didn’t see her as an enemy, definitely an ally of sorts. In which case she could stare all she liked; it wasn’t hurting anyone. Wesley hadn’t even noticed.

Buffy had insisted that they were going to have a proper Thanksgiving dinner in the dining hall, so although Angel and Gunn had tried to tell her that they didn’t like the dining hall as it always reminded them both of _The Shining_ , she had bulldozed their objections with the skill of long practice. So, here they were, all seated around a dining table in the middle of a score of others under eerie dust sheets, dining by candlelight because Buffy had insisted on that as well, passing hot rolls and cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie and in the case of Gunn trying not to stare at Illyria while she stared at Wesley.

Wesley had, at Buffy’s insistence, come down to dinner wearing his convalescent ‘uniform’ of new blue cotton pyjamas and matching robe. “It makes me feel like Arthur Dent,” he protested.

“But at least it’s honest about your physical fitness,” Buffy countered. “You’re not going to get better by pretending to be well when you’re not. You’re going to get better by resting, eating, and doing what Willow and I tell you. So there.”

Apart from being forced to wear jammies to the dinner table, Wesley was appearing more normal. He was still thin and pale and bruised, and certainly tired very quickly, but he seemed to be enjoying the Thanksgiving Dinner, asking Buffy what the dishes were and tasting them cautiously while Willow surreptitiously increased the portions on his plate.

“How are you feeling?” Angel asked him.

Wesley looked at him sideways. “Pretty much the same as I did ten minutes ago when you asked me that question.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Angel reached out and put a hand across his forehead. “Just checking.”

“Man, you’re paranoid,” Gunn told Angel loftily, before turning to Wesley. “But you’re really okay, right? You feel okay?”

Wesley tactfully suppressed a smile. “I feel much better, thank you. Clearly I’m a credit to your doctoring.”

“What about upstairs?” Spike tapped his temple.

“Are you asking about my level of sanity, Spike? If so, it’s slightly more precarious than when Angel and I left this dimension and slightly more stable than when we first returned to it.”

“Still pretty much only a nodding acquaintance with Mr Good Mental Health then?”

“Do you still crave death?” That was Illyria.

Wesley looked across at her. “I wasn’t aware that I ever did.”

Angel and Gunn exchanged a glance and Lorne hastily proposed a toast. “To – not being dead, pumpkins. I think we can definitely give thanks for that.”

“We don’t aim that high here,” Gunn explained to Xander. “Not being dead or irredeemably corrupted is pretty much a good day’s work for us.”

“And sometimes we even help the helpless,” Angel added dryly.

Gunn nodded in Angel’s direction as he added to Xander: “Of course, some of us can’t really manage the not being dead thing too well.”

“I still don’t understand why Buffy wanted to risk something icky happening by making a big deal out of Thanksgiving.” Xander heaped some more food onto his plate. “Last time she made a fuss about it, I got comedy syphilis and we were all nearly killed by the enraged spirits of dead Native Americans.”

“And I got shot full of arrows,” Spike pointed out.

“Yes, but that _was_ funny.”

Seeing Illyria still gazing at Wesley, Angel closed his eyes in irritation. “Okay, what is it?”

Illyria turned her pale blue gaze on him. “I have sensed the power of another since the return of Wesley and yourself. A power which does not originate in this dimension.”

“And you were going to mention this when exactly?” Angel demanded.

Illyria regarded him dispassionately. “When a portal to another world is opened there will always be an imbalance created. I was waiting to see if it dispersed. It has not.”

“What are you saying?” Spike asked.

“That you are still connected to that world.”

Angel glowered at her. “No, we’re not.”

Wesley touched himself across the chest and arms. “I don’t feel connected. Illyria, do you mean because of the memories we carry with us of that place?”

“There is a link between this world and that one. I believe it comes from you.”

“The sigils.” Willow started up out of her chair. “I must have missed one.”

“You didn’t miss any. We checked. Thoroughly.” As everyone looked at her Buffy rolled her eyes. “For Wesley’s own good.”

Wesley pulled the robe around himself a little more tightly. “How…reassuring.”

Illyria still gazed at Wesley unblinkingly. “You were a chattel in that world, were you not?”

“No,” said Angel tersely. “He wasn’t.”

“The dimension you entered sounds to me like Askaroth. No human has the right to be anything but a possession in such a place. Legally he must have belonged to another.” She looked at Lorne. “You know how this works.”

“Well, Your Rhythm’n’Blueness, not wanting to disagree with you, but I see a big difference between something being legally the case and morally the case. Wesley might legally have been a ‘chattel’ in Askaroth but morally he was always a free agent…”

She waved that aside impatiently and turned to Angel. “Did you have legal possession of him in that world? Or as a half-breed were you also unable to own property?”

“Wes isn’t ‘property’,” Angel snapped at her.

Gunn was feeling a little uneasy; relevant information lining up in his mind to make itself known to him. “Legally, he may be. You said you were sold by slavers to some demon who ran fights, right? Did he get some kind of bill of ownership?”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Buffy demanded. “Wesley was there. Now he’s here. He’s never going back there. End of story.”

“Not necessarily.” Gunn turned to Wesley. “Wes, do you remember any kind of…branding ceremony?”

“I remember them…burning the sigils into my skin. It hurt. I passed out.” Wesley poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table. “Is there a problem?”

“There could be.” Gunn looked at Angel’s angry face. “Look, I don’t like saying this any more than you like hearing it, but Illyria could have a point. When you were in Askaroth you were subject to its laws. There’s a chance that the demon who bought the two of you over there may be able to take some steps to reclaim his property. I was figuring as the portal had closed and the sigils were gone there was no way he’d be able to find you but if he’s got some kind of extra mojo working to keep tabs on Wes…”

“There really weren’t any sigils left.” Willow fiddled with her napkin anxiously. “We did check and check.”

Illyria put her head on one side. “Some brands of ownership are not disclosed by human magic.”

“Meaning…?” Giles demanded.

“It may be that he can be drawn back there.” 

Willow stared at her in horror. “No! That is _not_ happening.”

Illyria gazed at her intently. “You have proof that my assumptions are incorrect?”

“No, I mean – we won’t let that happen to Wesley.”

“You have a means to prevent it?”

“We’ll find one,” Buffy insisted. “He’s not going back there. He is _never_ going back there. Willow…?”

The red headed witch was already on her feet. “Giles, we need to research binding spells. We need to keep Wesley bound to this dimension and this world.”

Giles also nodded and got to his feet. “Of course.”

“Can’t you do it after dinner?” Wesley asked. “Buffy went to so much trouble.”

Buffy gazed at him. “Wes, do you really…? Never mind, we don’t have time – short version: turkey getting cold – on a par with a broken glass or maybe a persistent stain in the couch cushions. You getting dragged back to a hell dimension – worst enemy just stole your best guy, your hair frizzed, every nail got broken, you flunked math and have to take summer school to make up your grades, and your puppy died, essentially a happening that would seriously ruin the thanksgivingy vibe of my day. In short – best way for Buffy to have a good Thanksgiving – you not being reclaimed by evil demon slave owner guy. Got it?”

Wesley glanced across at Giles. “I think at least some of that was in some form of English, yes. But I don’t understand how that was the short version.”

“You will just have to take my word for it that it was and to be grateful for it,” Giles reassured him.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about…” Wesley broke off to clutch at his chest.

Buffy pushed her hair chair back hastily. “Oh God, I saw that movie.”

Willow darted her a frightened look. “Me too.”

Through gritted teeth, Wesley said, “I assure you have I have nothing gestating in my chest.”

“Are you sure about that?” Xander demanded. “Because I can’t help remembering how everyone died except Sigourney Weaver. Well, and the cat. And we don’t have an airlock here to be blowing any nasties out of.”

Wesley doubled over, still clutching a hand to his chest and Angel knocked over his chair in his anxiety to get to him. He took Wesley by the shoulders and made him sit up. “Wes? Wes, what is it?”

“Burning…” Wesley managed through gritted teeth. “More like…searing. Very painful. Would really like it to stop now.”

Angel pulled back Wesley’s robe and ripped open his pyjama jacket, scattering buttons across the table. Spike picked one off his plate. “Drama queen.”

“Willow!” Angel shouted for the witch before he realized she was already standing by his left shoulder trying to get a look. “What is it?” he demanded.

Gunn also peered over Angel’s shoulder to look. There was a pentagram glowing on Wesley’s chest, a line of light beneath the skin that burnt brighter, and then abruptly broke the surface in line of fresh dark blood. Wesley clutched at his chest, exclaiming with the pain while Angel hastily snatched up a napkin from the table and held it to the fresh wound.

“Let me look,” Willow protested. “Giles…? Do you recognize it?”

“Not out of hand.” The man peered at it closely through his glasses.

“It is a brand of ownership,” Illyria said calmly.

Wesley looked up at her. “Whose brand?”

“It says ‘Katorakan’. He must have considered you of some value. The brand is one that carries a penalty of death for those who steal you or abet those who try to sell you to another. Such a brand is expensive. Strong magic was used to create it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Angel was still mopping at the blood on Wesley’s chest, while the man breathed shallowly through the pain. “Wes was treated like garbage in that place. He was demon food. Nothing else. Katorakan was the demon who made money from the fights.”

“Perhaps he knew if he had hold of Wes you’d stick around and keep pulling in the punters?” Spike shrugged.

“But he wasn’t intending to keep us.” Wesley gritted his teeth as the blood welled up again. “We were being sold on. That’s why we had to escape. Katorakan’s fights took place in the open – his people were nomadic, travelling from township to township – there were possibilities for escape as long as we had access to open land. But we were being sold to a kind of demon sultan who kept his fighters in pits within a heavily guarded fortress.”

“Nashan-arel.” Angel grabbed another napkin and poured some of the water from his glass onto it before sponging Wesley’s chest. “A big demon with a lot of enemies – including Katorakan. He bid for us through an intermediary. We only found out because Katorakan captured one of his slaves and tortured him a bit too vigorously and the guy screamed loud enough for everyone to hear who he was working for. Katorakan cranked up the price after that but Nashan-arel had a boredom problem and he really wanted some new fighters.”

“Bid for _you_ ,” Wesley corrected. “I was what got tossed in free for the same price.”

“The point is that this Katorakan legally branded Wesley with his ownership.” Gunn wondered if he could impress upon them just how serious this is. “If this goes before any demon court in any dimension, they’re going to find for Katorakan. Most of them don’t admit human rights. It’s debated in a lot of worlds whether or not humans, as primarily a food source, are capable of sentient thought or can feel pain.”

“I can confirm the pain part.” Wesley dabbed at his chest again.

“If Katorakan comes here we kill him.” Buffy shrugged.

“It may not be that simple.” Gunn turned to Giles as the one most likely to grasp what he was talking about. “If he has the full weight of a demon court behind him they may have the power to take Wesley into custody – mystically. I think Angel should be safe enough. He’d count as a race that can’t be branded – that’s one of the differences between demonic and slave races in demon lore. If you can’t self-repair; if you can be easily scarred; you’re a lesser caste. Although vampires are only half-breeds they do have more demonic than human traits. I don’t think Katorakan can lay any kind of legal claim to Angel as all he did was pay money for him.”

Angel looked up at Gunn, dawning realization on his face. “You’re saying we may not be able to kill this guy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And he has a legal right to…repossess Wes?”

“Yes.” Gunn took the bloodied napkin from Wesley’s fingers and examined the mark on his chest again. The bleeding had almost stopped now and where it was drying the symbol was very clear. “This is a very powerful brand of ownership.”

“What about legal mojo, lawyerboy?” Lorne poured himself a sea breeze as if he really needed one.

“I’m thinking…”

Willow said to Giles, “We need to work on that binding spell.”

“I don’t think it’s going to help,” Gunn admitted. “Demon courts have a lot of power.”

“Well, we need to find a really powerful binding spell then.” Giles and Willow went over to where the research books were but although Willow had sounded determined, she looked pale and anxious.

Xander looked from Buffy to Angel and then back to Gunn. “Tell me this isn’t going to happen? Tell me there’s a way to stop this happening?”

Gunn gazed at the brand again but it bore all the seal markings of the most powerful demon law and wished he could give him that assurance.

“What about Katorakan’s right to brand him in the first place?” Angel demanded.

“A human in Askaroth has no rights.” Illyria also gazed at the symbol, face unreadable although Gunn suspected she was as anxious about Wesley as any of them.

“Couldn’t we set up a challenge to that position?” Giles called across from the books. “Try to get the demon courts to accept that humans aren’t chattels?”

Lorne nodded. “That sounds like the best approach to me. And a legal point that is well worth making not just for Wesley’s sake but for the sake of humans the pan-dimensional soup kitchen over.”

Angel seemed to be working along his own lines. “What if Wesley wasn’t a free agent when Katorakan claimed him? What if Wesley was already someone else’s property?”

Wesley looked up. “I’m not.”

“Legally you could be.” Angel turned to Gunn. “If Wesley was already owned at the time Katorakan claimed ownership that would make him stolen goods and Katorakan legally powerless to reclaim him, right?”

Gunn nodded. “Theoretically, yes. But Wes would have to be the property of someone regarded as able to own property under demon law. And in Askaroth that can’t apply to a human. Wesley’s father couldn’t claim him if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Angel stepped back, that set look on his face that sometimes meant he’d had a good idea and sometimes meant he was going to go and lock a bunch of lawyers in a wine cellar with a couple of homicidal she-vamps. “Legally, I think Wesley belongs to me.”

Giles and Buffy both looked at him sharply. Giles said, “What makes you think that?”

Spike also looked unconvinced. “Why? Because you say so?”

“No. Because he said so – five years ago – without coercion and of his own free will. He said he was my faithful servant. That’s a pledge of loyalty. Under the demon law of _our_ world that does accept the rights and choices of a human that means he is my property and therefore under my protection.”

Gunn flicked through the information in his mind. “A verbal pledge isn’t enough. You need proof of ownership. Your mark on Wesley or a blood oath or claiming ritual, preferably carried out according to demonic law.”

“There was.” Angel wheeled around triumphantly. “Wesley chose to give me his blood as further proof of his loyalty and reaffirmation of his allegiance.”

“Actually it was because you were hungry,” Wesley pointed out.

Angel still had that look that always made Gunn nervous. “But legally it could count as a blood oath, right?” 

Gunn grimaced. “It would have been better if there was an existing brand of your ownership.”

“But do I have a case for prior ownership even without a brand?”

“You have something. You can point to a verbal oath of allegiance backed up by a blood offering.”

“What about the ‘claiming ritual’?” Buffy pressed. “Is there time for Angel to do that instead? That’s not going to be as bad as branding Wesley, is it?”

There was an awkward silence in which Angel and Gunn pointedly didn’t meet each other eyes, broken by Spike saying, “I’d lay good money Wes has already been ‘claimed’ by Angel anyway. Just pretend you said some demonic mumbo jumbo while you were doing him – it – doing it.”

“I haven’t done…that to Wesley,” Angel insisted.

Spike looked unconvinced. “Not even once?”

“No.”

“Not even when he was drunk?”

“No.”

“What about Angelus? He’d have…claimed Wes as soon as looked at him. That would count, wouldn’t it?”

“It didn’t happen,” Angel retorted.

Spike turned to Gunn. “What about now? If the big poof leaves out all the bondage and torture it usually only takes him about three minutes so he could probably have Wes all nice and legal by eight-thirty.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gunn said hastily. “Like Angel said, Wesley offered him an oath of loyalty and sealed it with his blood before they went to Askaroth. It may be enough.”

“I’m not denying its effectiveness.” Giles came back over. “But am I the only one disturbed by using this argument? It’s effectively compromising Wesley’s rights as an individual to prop up a legal system that is immoral and racist.”

“I don’t care.” Angel glared at him. “If it keeps Wesley out of Askaroth I’ll use any means necessary.”

“You’re not the one being turned into someone else’s legal property.” 

“Supposing Willow got sucked into a hole in time and you got sucked in right along with her. You’re back in the Middle Ages and they’re going to burn her as a witch. They know God thinks it’s right for them to burn witches and that she’s in league with Satan or else she wouldn’t have the powers she does. Do you waste your time pointing out to them that burning witches is futile and immoral or do you find whatever legal loophole you can within their own crazy witchfinder general system to stop them setting that brush on fire? Think fast, Giles, because they’re lighting the torches right now.”

Giles looked at Angel’s angry intent face and nodded. “I see your point.”

“Good. Because right now it’s my friend tied to the brushwood. Why ever Katorakan may want Wesley back in his hell dimension it’s not going to be to Wesley’s advantage. If they take him back there he isn’t going to make it. He’s going to be made a demon chew toy and there is _nothing_ I won’t do to stop that happening.”

“Angel,” Wesley said gently, “it’s okay. No one here is trying to send me back there.”

“We don’t even know they want him back there,” Xander protested. “Isn’t everyone going a little crazy for no good reason right now? Just because Madam Smurf Demon has a feeling in her water does that really mean anyone is going to come here to reclaim Wesley? Like Angel said they didn’t seem to want him when they had him so why should they care now?”

“That’s what I don’t understand.” Wesley cautiously ran his fingertips across the bloody mark on his chest. “Katorakan didn’t know my name. He had no interest in me at all. Why would he bother to go through the expensive business of branding me with his symbol and making sure that he could track me even to a different dimension?”

“Because you were valuable to him.” Illyria regarded him curiously. “There can be no other explanation.”

“But I wasn’t. I was about as valuable to him as a ham sandwich and a slightly mouldy ham sandwich at that.”

“Hey.” Buffy looked at him. “I thought you were working on those self esteem issues?”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Willow got rid of the sigils.” Xander looked around at everyone. “How can Wesley still be tracked here?”

As a distant roaring began to manifest itself as a whole building shaking of the Hyperion, Gunn said, “I’m not sure, but I’m thinking that’s what’s happening.”

Before the words were out of his mouth a red-skinned demon dressed in rich fabrics and hung around with chains of power, and two massive stone seats of justice with armoured dignitaries seated upon them appeared in the lobby of the Hyperion.

“Bugger,” said Spike distinctly.

 

“There it is.” The red-skinned demon pointed imperiously at Wesley. “I reclaim my property under the laws of Askaroth.”

“He’s not your property.” Angel stood in front of Wesley while Spike crossed over to where the weapons cabinet was and began to break out axes and swords to the assembled Scoobies and Hyperion residents.

“That one is mine as well.” Katorakan pointed to Angel. “I paid a good price for that vampire.”

With his heart beating fast, Gunn stepped in front of Angel. “We dispute that claim under article 108 subsection 26 of Earth Demon Law. A vampire is an unbrandable being and for the purposes of ownership disputes shall be judged as if it were a full demon. As a vampire Angel cannot be owned by man or demon or any other breed.”

The two dignitaries inclined their heads majestically. “We find in favour of the vampire. He cannot be owned. He is not your property.”

Katorakan showed no particular displeasure, only the mildest of irritation. He turned his attention back to Wesley. “I concede the vampire – despite the considerable sum I paid for it – and submit myself to the ruling of this noble court. But as to the human there can be no dispute. It is my property, bought and marked as mine.”

As Gunn took a deep breath, Angel stepped forward. “Stolen goods,” he said flatly.

Katorakan gazed at him in disbelief. “This is absurd. The creature was unbranded.”

“I didn’t need to brand him. He was bound to me by a vow of fealty and a blood oath. Given freely, which in this dimension makes him my property by Demon Law.”

“I don’t believe it,” Katorakan retorted. “If that were so you would have legally removed my brand and yet you have not done so.” He pointed to Wesley and his scored chest.

Gunn said quickly, “We would not presume to tamper with a legal document recognized by so ancient and noble a court as the one in which we now find ourselves. But we do dispute the legality of Katorakan’s claim to ownership. The human known as Wesley had already given a vow of loyalty and fidelity to the vampire known as Angel. We know that this court recognizes the right of a vampire to have full ownership of a human, and that such an owned human cannot be claimed by another unless it is with the vampire’s consent.”

“And for the record,” Angel put in. “I didn’t consent. My consent wasn’t asked and if it had been I wouldn’t have given it. At the time when Katorakan was paying money for Wesley he was already owned by me. So, like I said – stolen goods.”

Glancing across at Giles, Gunn could see the Englishman gritting his teeth over the word ‘owned’ and he was having a little trouble saying it himself, but on this Angel was right, this was not the time or the place to start disputing the morality of humans having no rights in an Askorathan demon court. This was the time and the place to hang onto Wesley by any means possible and to debate the ethics of it later.

“Is there a signed document of this ownership?” the first dignitary enquired.

Angel shook his head and Gunn said quickly, “As the defendant was not anticipating leaving this dimension he saw no reason to register an ownership which at that time and on this world was not disputed.”

“Why is Angel the defendant?” Xander murmured. “Isn’t Wesley the guy in the dock…?”

“No,” Giles said tautly. “Wesley has no rights except as something owned by Angel. Think of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who killed one of her children to prevent her from being returned to slavery when recapture became inevitable, and the case of ‘destruction of property’ brought against her.” 

“Does he carry any mark of ownership?” the second dignitary pressed.

“Only the mark erroneously affixed to the disputed human property by Lord Katorakan when he was unaware of the disputed human’s true ownership.”

“I am its true owner,” Katorakan retorted fiercely. “There was nothing erroneous in its branding. It was carried out exactly according to the laws of Askaroth. This vampire’s claim is spurious and false.”

“I really don’t like him,” Buffy observed to Willow. 

“I hate this legal mumbo jumbo,” Spike growled. “Why can’t we just kill the slave-owning bastard and be done with it?”

Gunn said rapidly in an undertone: “Katorakan is under the protection of the court. Any move against him will be contempt of court and it could cost Wesley his life.” Turning back to the dignitaries he said, “With all due respect to Lord Katorakan, the vampire’s ownership of the human called Wesley is indisputable under Earth Demon Law. According to Article 9176, an oath of fealty by a lesser being to a demon shall be accepted as binding and cannot be broken except by the consent of that demon – a consent that in this case was clearly not given. The oath was given many years prior to the human’s arrival in your dimension and was ratified by a second oath of fealty, made in blood, as laid down in clause 584 subsection 929 of the Articles of Bondage.”

“‘Articles of Bondage’?” Xander looked across at Spike. “That sounds like so much less fun than you’d expect.”

“What proof is there of this oath of fealty in word or blood and how can it compare with a legal branding?” Katorakan demanded.

“You have my word as a…demon,” Angel said.

The two dignitaries conferred quietly and then the first looked up. “If this oath is truly binding by the laws of this dimension then it shall prove sufficient to overwrite the claim made by Katorakan. In your world, your laws shall prove the stronger. But there must be proof that such an oath was made.”

“What proof do you need?” Angel enquired.

“The branding of the human is a legal document, signed in the blood of the one who claimed him as a chattel. If in truth this human was already your property then your blood shall be enough to overwrite the signature of Katorakan. If not, then your claim was not properly binding even in your own world and the human shall pass back to Katorakan.”

Gunn said rapidly to Angel: “Your blood should dissolve the brand on Wesley’s chest. If it doesn’t, Katorakan’s claim stands and we have a very bloody probably very futile fight on our hands.”

Looking as though he were not in any doubt as the outcome, Angel picked up a knife from the table, walked over to where Wesley was still sitting and stood over him. The two exchanged a glance and then Angel slashed his palm and held it over Wesley’s chest. There was an endless pause before the first drop of blood splashed down onto Wesley’s skin and for a terrible second nothing happened. Gunn was mentally working out how best to utilize what assets they had in the inevitable fight when there was a sizzle and Angel’s blood began dissolve the edge of the brand. Angel squeezed his hand so more blood fell and where each drop landed, Katorakan’s brand was dissolved and unmarked skin left beneath it.

Angel closed his eyes but gave no other outward sign of his relief but Gunn had difficulty stopping his knees from sagging. Xander was not exactly wearing his best poker face either, and Willow put her arms around Buffy to hug her. Wesley gazed down at his chest and the vanishing brand as if fascinated by it.

Illyria stepped into the breach. “The court accepts the vampire’s ownership of the human called Wesley? They concur that the vampire had a prior claim and that Katorakan’s branding was unlawful and unbinding?”

The dignitaries consulted for a moment and then gravely inclined their head. “We do. We would suggest that the vampire should affix his own mark to his property so that no further confusion arises as to this human’s bonded state.”

“I paid money for that slave in good faith.” Katorakan was far more hot and bothered than Gunn would have expected. He had barely looked at Wesley; only at the brand on his chest which Angel’s blood had now completely dissolved; yet it seemed to be of an entirely disproportionate importance to him that he should be able to take Wesley back with him. 

The second dignitary said gravely: “The court accepts that no wrong doing was intended by Katorakan and that he had no reason to assume the human was already owned. In this we feel the vampire was negligent and has only himself to blame for the confusion.” He looked at Angel directly. “You will see to it that in future all slaves of your possession are properly branded with your mark?”

“Of course.” Angel’s face didn’t so much as flicker whereas Gunn could hear Giles grinding his teeth from twenty feet away.

“Then this court finds in your favour. The slave is yours. Katorakan’s claim is disallowed. If however you come before this court a second time and are proven to be negligent in the correct marking of your property it may be deemed necessary to confiscate your goods. In this instance we accept that you were not attempting to deceive anyone. Next time we may not be so lenient.”

“You don’t understand. I have to have that slave!” Katorakan glared at Wesley. 

Illyria put her head on one side, like a bird of prey sighting a rabbit a long way below her. “You are not welcome here. The court will not protect you if you argue with its findings.” She tilted her head the other way, subtly inhuman.

Spike was already twirling an axe in his hands, while Buffy was holding up her sword. As the ground began to rumble once again, Katorakan looked at Wesley again, very obviously weighed up the chances of successfully snatching him, looked from Spike to Buffy to Illyria, snarled and then backed up. “You’ll regret this,” he told him.

“Really doubt it,” Spike retorted.

“The decision of the court is final.” The first dignitary lifted a hand and the rumbling became louder and then the dais, the two dignitaries, and Katorakan disappeared in a cloud of smoke

“That was cool.” Buffy sheathed the sword. “As dramatic mystical exits go anyway.”

Wesley looked up at Angel. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” Spike tossed the axe down onto the lobby couch and strolled across. “For once, being an arrogant possessive megalomaniac control freak actually worked out for someone other than you. Kudos.”

Wesley looked past Angel to Gunn. “And thank you, too.”

“You rocked.” Xander slapped Gunn on the shoulder.

“You are Perry Mason, Petrocelli and Clarence Darrow rolled into one, my legally enhanced slice of cherry pie.” Lorne reached across to high five Gunn.

Gunn looked at Illyria. “Well, I paid a high enough price for this ability. It’s something to be able to use it for good.”

“You saved my life, Charles.” Wesley gazed at him intently. “If you didn’t have all that demon law in your brain I would be on my way to being very dead right now. And I am truly grateful to you.”

Gunn reached out and for the first time in a long time he and Wesley touched their knuckles together and then shared their old familiar handshake. “You’re welcome, English, just don’t go diving into any more hell dimensions.”

Giles nodded. “Yes. I hate the way we won this one, but I’m glad it was won nevertheless.”

Angel looked at Gunn. “Now what do I need to do to prove to the demon courts of this dimension that Wes is my property?”

Gunn cleared his throat. “Like I said, your…mark has to be mystically burnt into Wesley’s skin.”

“That isn’t an option.” Giles took in Angel’s expression. “You can’t be serious?”

“Of course he isn’t serious,” Xander reassured everyone. “Angel…? You’re not serious, right?”

“Whatever Wesley is or has it’s important to Katorakan. I don’t trust him to leave matters like this. We need some really unanswerable proof that Wesley is my property.”

“But he _isn’t_ your property,” Giles said intently.

Angel glanced at him. “He’s alive because that’s exactly what he is. And I’m keeping him that way.”

“Alive or yours?” Spike enquired.

“Both.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You are such a drama queen.”

“I keep my people safe.” They all knew that was a lie but no one quite had the heart to contradict it. Certainly, Angel always wanted to keep his people safe even if he didn’t always manage it.

“And enslaved apparently.” Giles met Angel’s eyes. “This is wrong and you know it.”

“I don’t care if it’s wrong or right. I care about keeping Wesley away from Katorakan and I’ll use any means available to do that.”

“Why don’t you just do as Spike suggested and rape him then?” Giles demanded. 

Wesley held up a hand. “I’d like to vote against that option.”

“Yes, but your opinion doesn’t count for anything, Wesley,” Giles told him tersely. “Remember you’re just a demon chattel now. Angel will do what is best for you whether you want him to or not.”

Spike also held up a hand. “I was gonna knock Wes out so he wouldn’t be conscious for it. And it’s not like it would be the first time Angel’s done someone when they’re…”

“Shut up, Spike.” Angel turned back to Giles. “Wesley is my responsibility, not yours. I’m older than him and I’m older than you.”

“Daddy knows best, eh?” Spike observed. “Actually I think you’ll find her blue rinseness has the drop on you when it comes to seniority. You going to let her choose who Wesley belongs to on that account?”

“He is not your property,” Giles told him through gritted teeth.

“I’m keeping him safe. And I’m keeping him here.” He turned to Wesley and at once his eyes were kind and anxious. “Wes, we get the binding spell up and running, we cover all the angles; then we work out what the hell Katorakan wanted you for. You don’t need to worry. I’m going to take care of this. I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know.” Wesley looked at him anxiously. “Angel. You don’t need to…”

“Yes, I do.” Angel stroked Wesley’s hair back from his face. “You look tired and you lost more blood. Let me help you upstairs.”

As Wesley obediently stood up and let Angel support him, Gunn said quietly to Giles, “Angel is only trying to…”

“He’s trying my patience, I can tell you that much.”

“He just wants to keep Wesley safe.” But Buffy was also watching Angel’s departure a little anxiously.

Spike shook his head. “The guy has lost it and I don’t mean somewhere in the immediate vicinity, I mean lost it way _way_ over there somewhere. Not going to be found without a major expedition lost it.”

“He’s worried about Wesley.”

Willow looked pretty worried herself, and Xander put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

“He’s scary, I grant you, and I’m not sure those two have half a healthy psyche between them, but the point is Wesley is still here and the bad demon guy isn’t, so let’s chalk one up for the good guys and go eat pie.”

***

As he came down the stairs, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone, Gunn saw the lamp was on in the office. “Wes…?” 

It was so much Wesley’s habit to be researching all night that it didn’t occur to him it could be anyone else until the man looked up and he saw to his surprise that it was Giles.

“Giles?” Gunn came on into the office and shut the door. “What’s up?”

Giles didn’t beat around the bush, Gunn could say that for him. “Are you going to be a party to this madness of Angel’s?”

Gunn sighed and sat down in the next most comfortable chair. “I want to keep Wes safe too.”

“At any price?”

“If Wesley doesn’t mind…”

“Wesley isn’t in his right mind. He isn’t capable of making a rational decision right now. He trusts Angel so –”

“He trusts Angel for a reason,” Gunn pointed out. “Angel kept him alive in that place. Angel went in there for no other reason other than that he thought Wesley might have a chance with him that he wouldn’t have without him. And Wes has been crazy before and even when he’s crazy he’s usually pretty sane.”

“Like when he stabbed you?”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Because I deserved it.” As Giles still didn’t seem to get it, Gunn decided to spell it out for him. “What happened today, that wasn’t a magic trick. Under demon law Wesley willingly bound himself to Angel. You’re choking on it because you think that isn’t what happened, that Angel’s taking advantage of Wesley’s temporary dependency on him. But the truth is that Wesley did bind himself to Angel. He needed a cause and Angel was the cause he chose. He offered him an oath of loyalty and then he sealed it in blood.”

“He fed a starving friend.”

“A starving friend who the last time he saw him had tried to smother him with a pillow. Giles, don’t kid yourself. Wesley’s okay with this. Would I be happier if he wasn’t? Hell, yeah, but I’m not going to pretend things aren’t the way they are.” Gunn realized how tired he was and put a hand up to his head, feeling his shaven skull, the warmth of bare skin, proof that he was himself again. 

“And you’re still in agreement that Wesley should make himself a legal possession of Angel’s?” 

“He already is. Legally. Any demon court in the pan dimensional universe is going to find that Wesley has pledged himself to Angel the man and Angel the cause, because that’s the truth. All Angel is doing is making something some of us maybe find a little hard to swallow an unavoidable fact.”

“What he’s doing is claiming Wesley as his personal possession and getting Wesley to acquiesce to the plan. What he’s doing is enslaving his friend. I don’t trust Angel’s judgement the way you do, Gunn. I believe he wants to keep Wesley safe but I also believe that he has no moral objection to this morally objectionable plan because in his heart of hearts he thinks Wesley does belong to him. And that sticks in my craw more than somewhat.”

“Then take it up with Wesley because he obviously believes it too. Otherwise he’d be Katorakan’s property by now.” Gunn met the man’s eye. “Giles, face it, the problem here isn’t Angel, it’s Wesley. You’re not mad at Angel for proposing this plan, you’re mad at Wesley for going along with it. Because we both know he will. He’ll let Angel brand him with any mark of ownership he likes.”

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. “And you’re going to go along with it?”

“I’m saying whether Angel brands Wesley with his initials or not Wesley still belongs to Angel because Wesley made that decision a long time ago and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. One little brand of ownership doesn’t make any difference to who Wesley is or how the rest of us see him or how he and Angel behave to one another. Trust me, compared with all the rest of the shit he’s been through and will probably go through in the future, it’s nothing.”

“That’s a bleak forecast, Charles, but I fear it’s probably accurate.”

They both spun around in horror to find Wesley standing in the doorway. The smile he gave Gunn was unexpectedly sweet. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just wanted a cup of tea.” As they both kept staring at him, he edged past them to where the kettle was, picked it up to test its weight, and then switched it on. “I was thirsty,” he added.

“Yes, of course.” Giles recovered himself.

“Blood loss will do that,” Gunn added. 

Giles took a deep breath. “Wesley, about this ‘ownership’ arrangement Angel seems to have his heart so set upon…?”

“I don’t care.” Wesley put a teabag into a mug. “And yes, I know I probably should, but the fact is I don’t. And whether we like it or don’t – and I think a lot of the time we really don’t – we have all nailed Angel’s colours to our mast a long time ago, and it’s too late to take them down now. We chose our path or it chose us but either way our lives are too entwined with Angel’s now for any of us to just walk away.”

“You will be legally Angel’s property.” Giles took the kettle from Wesley and poured out the tea for both of them. “Technically, I suppose you will be Angelus’s property too.”

“By demon law, yes.” Wesley shrugged. “But most of the time demon law doesn’t really impinge upon us and when it does I think it would be more to my advantage than not.”

“But how can you not mind giving up…?”

Wesley interrupted him quietly: “Because I’m tired, Giles, probably not entirely sane, and because, as I mentioned before, I don’t care. I trust Angel. Absolutely.”

“The man who stole your memories? The man who locked those lawyers in a wine cellar? This is the person you ‘trust absolutely’?” Giles handed Wesley his tea.

Wesley took the cup and gave Giles a rueful smile. “We did cover the not entirely sane thing, didn’t we?”

 

On the landing of the Hyperion Buffy looked across at Angel. “I suppose you can hear everything they’re saying down there?”

“Yes.” Angel added some vodka to her glass and to his own. Lorne had been kind enough to pour him and Wesley a drink before heading off to look for tylenol, but Angel had shared the Sea Breeze with Buffy instead. The last thing Wesley needed right now in his opinion was to muddle his already fragile mind with alcohol. Probably a decision he should have let Wesley make, of course. No doubt that was what Giles would say, and he would probably be right. Lorne had looked wrecked and in need of some of that vodka himself but before Angel could ask him what was wrong the demon had told him that his head was boiling like a furnace and anyone who tried to talk to him using words that made any sound louder than a whisper would do so at his peril.

Buffy nudged him. “So, what are they saying?”

Angel shrugged. “That Wes is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. That I have no right to call him my property. That it makes no difference because Wes will always do what I want just because I want it and just because of who he is which is just exactly what I’ve made him.”

“That isn’t true.” There was a pause before she said with less confidence. “Is it?”

He took another sip of vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, thinking he would have preferred whisky. The good old Irish kind he’d used to drink in the good old Irish days. When he’d been human and never thought to take a minute to be grateful for that state of being because what other state was there? “I have to protect him, Buffy.”

“I know.” She spoke gently, not judging him.

“He used to be whole. He used to be sane.”

“I’ve made my share of mistakes. People have died because of choices that I’ve made. Xander has an eyepatch where his left eye used to be because of choices I’ve made. I don’t have the right to judge you or blame you. I believe you’ve done everything you’ve done because you thought it was right or because you were trying to protect the people around you. That doesn’t mean you haven’t made mistakes or that other people didn’t end up paying for them.”

“He used to have one set of memories in his head and all of them were true.”

“Why did you do it?” 

“The mindwipe? I did it to protect Connor. I figured we’d all done our part to drive him to becoming the person he was, we could all pay something of the price for it. I thought we’d have to make compromises, worry about corruption. But Cordy never truly woke up from that coma, and Fred paid with her life. The decisions they made… I don’t know what they would have decided if they’d remembered everything. Part of the reason why Wesley signed up was because he thought the records might be useful, all those files, a means to investigate the Senior Partners. He didn’t remember that records can be falsified. That even prophecies can lie.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” Buffy took another sip of her drink. “He would have followed you to Wolfram & Hart whoever’s memories he had. When the last thing he remembered was you trying to suffocate him he still pulled you out of the sea. He’s bound to you. They all are. And to each other. I know how that works. I know how it sucks too. Watching your friends get taken away in an ambulance. Watching them lose themselves. Willow started studying magic to help me. It nearly swallowed her whole. Xander could be blind now. He almost was. I don’t even want to start on what I did to Spike, because he didn’t matter, and everything inside me hurt so what did I care if he was suffering too…”

“Okay, beating yourself up about Spike – that really is ridiculous.”

She smiled despite herself. “You two have elevated petty to a whole new level.”

He shrugged. “We try.”

She paused before saying delicately: “I’m not a great thinker either, but Giles and Willow and Wesley are, so they’re going to work it out even if we don’t say anything. They probably already have. That demon guy was selling you to his enemy. An enemy who lives inside a fortress. You’d be significant. He’d look at you. Check you out. But in a world where humans don’t matter how closely would look at anyone look at Wesley…?”

“Just say it.” Angel finished his drink one gulp.

“Do you think Wesley’s a walking bomb?”

He swallowed the vodka, grateful for the burn of it on the back of his throat. He definitely missed that whisky. Not that it would taste the way it used to. Nothing did. Only blood had its full range of flavour. But he would have liked some of it all the same. “I think it’s possible.”

“We’ll defuse it.” She took Angel by the arms and made him look at her. “Angel, believe me. You’re not going to lose another friend.”

“What if that’s my real destiny? To be the cause of murdering everyone I’ve ever loved? I started off down that track when I was barely out of the coffin womb. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done. All the murder and mayhem Drusilla caused, and Spike, and Penn, as well as my own crimes. Maybe no one can ever pay for that level of bloodshed. Maybe all I’ve done by trying to atone is murder more innocents.”

She pulled his head down gently and rested her forehead against his. “That isn’t what happened, Angel.”

“Cordy and Fred used to be alive and Wesley used to be whole. And Gunn used to be so full of confidence. He knew exactly who he was like no one else walking the earth. How did I turn Wesley into a guy who wakes up screaming? Gunn into a guy who thought he was nothing without a lot of stolen knowledge in his brain? What did I do to them, Buffy?”

“In Cordelia’s vision of another reality I lost my arm to the Kungai demon.”

They turned to find Wesley slowly walking up the stairs, evidently finding the climb exhausting, particularly with his concentration fixed on his cup of tea, but doing it anyway, step by step.

“It was a lie,” Angel reminded him. “A lot of stuff made up by Skip so they could demonise her.”

“Okay then, supposing that without you I would have kept my arm after all, I would still have died in that fire.”

Angel sighed. “Wes, you only almost died in the fire because you were working for me, remember?”

“Are you saying you don’t think Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, rogue demon hunter, would have earned himself the enmity of Wolfram & Hart unaided?”

“I’m saying maybe I wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Wesley made a dismissive noise and helpfully explained, “That sound is usually denoted as ‘pshaw’. I could add a ‘poppycock’ for clarity if you like.”

Angel gazed at him fondly. “Why are you even up, crazy watcher boy?”

Wesley held up his teacup. “I have eight months of tea-deprivation to make up for.”

“How does it feel to be bonded to a demon?” Buffy asked.

“So far it seems like a sinecure to me. The hours aren’t too bad and the work is minimal. And yes, I guessed it had to be a bomb after Katorakan made such a fuss. Nothing else made sense. That’s why I sang for Lorne.”

“Singing for Lorne.” Angel nodded. “Of course. Good idea. Did he…?”

“Three days.” Wesley took another sip of tea. “I’ll spend two of those working on research but then I’m going to rent a car and drive into the desert. I’m really not interested in finding out how big a crater I can make in a densely populated area.”

“We’ll defuse it,” Buffy told him. “I promise you we will.”

“I promised Fred she wouldn’t die.” Wesley drained his tea and held out the cup to Angel who took it automatically. “Sometimes you can’t fix things however much you want to. Either way, a device powerful enough to take out a fortress is going to pack something of a punch. I imagine I won’t feel a thing. Like Lilah when I cut off her head. Do you realize, Angel, that every woman I have dated over the past six years except for Virginia, is now dead? Poor Cordy. If I’m the black widower of Angel Investigations it does seem hard that she had to pay so high a price for one measly dance and one very bad kiss.”

“Wes, they didn’t die because of you.”

Wesley glanced at Angel mildly. “Oh, of course not, because they died because of you, didn’t they? I was forgetting that everything that happens on this planet has to be your fault.”

“It was my fault.”

“They made their own choices. So did I. You didn’t manacle me to those offices. I wanted to stay. I still want to stay. If I get the chance to go on staying I’ll be grateful.”

“So will I.” Angel gazed into his eyes. “I’ll be very grateful.”

Wesley sniffed Angel’s glass and then shook his head. “We really need some single malt.”

“You really need some sleep,” Angel countered.

For the first time Wesley let down his guard enough and they both saw the flicker of vulnerability as he gazed at the open door of the room in which he had suffered so many nightmares. “Will you…?”

“I’ll come now.” Angel took his arm. “It’s past my bedtime. And ever since I passed my quarter millennium I find I really need my beauty sleep.”

Wesley looked relieved. “You don’t look a day over two hundred to me.”

“Do you want to find out what happens to my bonded human slaves who give me jip?”

“It’s oddly disturbing to find that the more time that goes by, the more often I’m forced to agree that Spike may have a point about you...”

Angel nodded to Buffy who smiled back at him a little sadly. There was no one who understood ‘love me, love my crazy friends’ better than her, but the fact remained that they were two champions needed to fight separate battles and ultimately they were going to be going in different directions. For the moment he was just enjoying the rare luxury of her being a guest in his home.

He helped Wesley over to the bed and pulled back the covers, then coaxed the man out of his robe. For all his ability to hold a conversation, Wesley looked pale with exhaustion. Angel had to catch his arm as he swayed, and then hold onto him as he more or less fell into the bed, lowering him gently. He pulled off his own clothes swiftly, refusing to think about Giles looking down his nose at him, as if this was about taking advantage of Wesley instead of taking care of him. On Askaroth in their slave cage they had curled together naked and within a short time even Wesley had thought nothing of it. He resented the soft cotton of Wesley’s pyjamas, afraid it would muffle the warmth of his body, the beat of his heart. But then he had his arms wrapped around his friend and Wesley sighed in relief, feeling safe, Angel could tell, hearing his heartbeat slow a little, calming as the sense of peace spread through him. Angel stroked Wesley’s hair absently, still finding it strange to get used to these soft clean locks after the tangled knots of before.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised him. “Because nothing and no one is going to make me lose another friend, not after Doyle and Cordy and Fred. Certainly no dumb mystical bomb.”

But Wesley was already sleep, breathing even, heartbeat regular, despite his bondage to a demon, despite the attempt to snatch him back to Askaroth, despite the bomb ticking somewhere inside him, just because he was in Angel’s arms and therefore, evidently, safe. Angel heard again Wesley saying: “Because… I trust Angel. Absolutely.” And realized once again how true that was. He just wished he could have felt as confident as Wesley evidently did that he really deserved that trust.

***

Willow could feel the bomb. When she closed her eyes she could visualize it too. It glowed with darkness, spherical, but with wires protruding from it, delicate tendrils designed to send the mystical force contained within it exploding outwards in all directions. If its intent had been less ugly she might have thought it beautiful. She held the memory of the sigils on Wesley’s body, the mark on his chest, in her mind, and examined the bomb from all angles. The markings were in a language she didn’t recognize but it no longer mattered. Her power had grown to a point where she knew what it said. Outside of Wesley’s body she could have defused it easily, but that was why it had been hidden in a warm-blooded human form. The variables of Wesley’s body temperature, his heart rate, his pulse and breath had all been incorporated into the protective spell that kept the bomb shielded. If Wesley were killed, the bomb would detonate. If any attempt was made to cut him open while his heart was still beating, the tendrils would be severed and the bomb would detonate. It could only be rendered harmless through powerful magic; magic so powerful she feared that it might drain her into unconsciousness, something very dangerous for everyone, given that, if she fainted in the middle of extracting the bomb, her magic would slip and it would explode.

It had to be done quickly, that was clear. This was a place of mystical convergence; it had been seeped in magic in the past, both good and bad; demons would always have been drawn here; it was no doubt why Angel had been drawn here. It had sufficient power of its own that a perimeter spell might work; a way to contain the blast if she failed. Wesley driving out into the desert was not an option, of course. There was a point where the suffering had to stop; where good things had to happen to good people instead of always bad, worse, worst. She had listened when Gunn had been talking earlier and heard it all; Wesley’s history, from abusive childhood, locked in the dark by a father who didn’t love him, to a lonely adolescence with no friends; to Sunnydale and rejection, to LA and acceptance, and then the prophecy, his noble but ultimately worthless sacrifice in trying to save Connor and instead condemning him to a Hell dimension. So ironic and so very unfair that the man who had been prepared to risk everything to save that baby from an untimely death had been the one responsible for setting him on the path to insanity that had so nearly claimed his life. Then had come Angel’s murderous attack on Wesley; Fred, Gunn and Cordy’s rigid drawing of lines in the sand; Wesley an outcast, sleeping with the enemy, no, sleeping with a human woman who had, Angel had maintained, come to love him, and whose head he had to separate from her corpse after death. Then Angel’s deal: Connor’s new life for their memories, a deal with Wolfram & Hart that had almost swallowed them all whole. A decision that had failed to save Cordelia, failed to save Fred, driven Wesley insane with grief, and then, after some seers for the Senior Partners had taken a look into some magic mirror, there had been their insistence that Angel had broken their agreement and been plotting against them. 

Then, as Angel was still arguing with them, had come the unleashing of the apocalypse through that jagged gateway into a hell dimension, just as Wesley had translated the sacred scroll they had stolen from the Senior Partners which said that this was the Cauldron of Hell. As flame and smoke billowed through the rip between this dimension and the next, Wesley had conjured from the scroll the clue by which a ‘learnèd mortal man’ might yet close it; the word ‘Efnisien’ burning itself onto the parchment.

“Of course…!” Wesley had exclaimed. “The Cauldron exists to bring forth the dead and so can only be shattered by a live man entering it willingly.” Then he had run for the rip between the worlds, before anyone could lay a hand upon him to hold him back, just as Buffy had done to close a mouth to another dimension in her time; and, as with Buffy, he had known this was a one-way trip. But Angel, although he had been too slow to prevent Wesley throwing himself into the void, had been fast enough to throw himself after him a second before the chasm had closed and Gunn, Lorne, Spike and Illyria had found themselves on the sidewalk outside the smoking ruins of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, owning nothing but the clothes they were wearing and the weapons they were holding. But in their own world with the gateway to hell closed again and no demon hordes overrunning the earth. Well, no more demon hordes than were already overrunning it anyway.

That made Wesley more than just a man who had spent his life trying to do what was right for the greater good, that made him a bona fide hero in Willow’s book, and heroes didn’t deserve to be ripped apart by mystical booby traps set by slave-dealing demons. They deserved to have some life and health and happiness. She just hoped there was a way that she could save Wesley that wasn’t going to involve killing herself or anyone else.

“Hey, Will…”

She looked up to find Xander standing in the doorway looking at her compassionately. “Would I be right in thinking you might like a little help?”

She gazed at her childhood friend, still not reconciled to the eye patch; she would never ever be reconciled to the eye patch, the injustice of what the good fight had cost him. Angel had told her that was an accusation a policewoman had levelled at him once, that while he and the other champions fought their grand battles of good and evil, it was the ordinary mortals who paid the price. Xander wasn’t a Slayer or a warlock or any part demon. He was just a human male, whom she loved more than she believed she could have loved any brother, would always love perhaps more than anyone else upon the planet; fragile and fallible and so horribly easy to maim.

She tossed aside her pencil. “You would be right.”

“Research help? Tea brewing help? Or just plain massage the kinks out of your shoulders help?”

“Moral support help. But I’m reserving the right to ask for all the other kinds of help as well.”

“Not looking too shiny for Wes right now?” He sat down next to her and rubbed her back comfortingly.

“I think I’ve found a spell to do it.”

“Well, that’s great.” He gave her an encouraging look and then must have read her expression correctly. “Okay, there’s a snag. What’s the snag?”

“The only safe way to do this – safe for the people in LA – is to wrap the hotel in a…”

“Super fuelled version of the Sanctuary spell?” 

And there was Lorne, who Willow was already finding strangely comforting whenever he appeared, perhaps because of rather than in spite of the lamé jacket and perpetual clinking of ice cubes in his ever present Sea Breeze.

“Yes, exactly. The _really_ safest way would be to take it out of this dimension completely, put it in a place of neutral space, so if it did explode it wouldn’t take anywhere else with it, then send the bomb back to where it came from and then return the hotel to this dimension again. But I don’t have the power to do that. The best I can do is to try to encase the hotel in an impenetrable mystical wall so that the force of the explosion can’t get through and…”

“Turn LA into Apocalypse Here?”

“Yes.”

Lorne sighed. “Time was Illyria could have managed that little dimension hop for you no trouble at all. But these days her Blueness isn’t running on the full demon-god unleaded. She can make a little time bubble, kick a few scaly beasties back to hell, but no more time bending. On the upside, she doesn’t try to kill us anything like as much these days and hardly ever throws Angel out of a thirtieth floor window.”

“How much juice do you need, Willow?” Xander enquired. “And is there a way we can jump start it to you?”

Lorne nodded. “A circle is always good. Hand holding. Maybe hold off on the singing of folk songs unless we particularly want Spike and Angel back in vamp face.”

“No.” Willow looked between them anxiously. “Everyone who isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be outside of the hotel.”

“Are you going to be inside the hotel?” Xander enquired.

“Yes, I have to do the spell from in here.”

“Then I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”

“No, you can’t, it’s too danger…”

He pointed to his eyepatch. “You’re arguing with the handicapped now? That’s low, Willow. And you may as well save your breath. You know I won’t leave you.”

“That goes for me too.” Willow looked up to find Buffy standing in the doorway, arms folded. “We do this together, the way we always do.”

“Wise words.” Giles stepped into the room. “Willow, before you waste your breath in arguing with us, you know we’re right. As you say, such a spell is going to take a tremendous concentration of energy. Buffy can lend you some of her Slayer strength. I have some magical abilities of my own, and Xander can…make his own unique contribution.”

Xander frowned. “You said that as if you weren’t being sarcastic. Are you ill?”

“Given that I’m talking to the man who once saved the world just by refusing to give up on a friend I don’t think sarcasm would be appropriate, do you? Or underestimating the power of true friendship.”

Lorne took another sip of his Sea Breeze. “Well, I can’t speak for the rest of our not so happy little family, kids, but I can tell you which side of the barrier I’m going to be on when this particular balloon goes up and, yes, it is the one with the view of the lobby. I’m not the greatest demon sorcerer in town, it’s true, but I have been known to cast the odd spell in my time and I can’t help thinking any circle that had me in it would be at least a cocktail stronger.”

“You don’t need to…” Willow began.

“Yes I do.” His red gaze met her green one. “Wes, Interrupted is my friend and – sweetheart, you hum when you’re anxious – you’re right in thinking the universe didn’t exactly usher him to the front of the queue when the breaks were being handed out. I’m alive in a world that isn’t overrun with all the wrong kind of demons right now because he was willing to give up his life for the rest of us. Seems to me it’s time the rest of us gave something back.”

“I second that.” Gunn smiled at Lorne gently. “Not saying I’ve got a lot in the mystical mojo line – that was always Wes’s area of expertise – but I can hold hands and chant with the best of them.”

Willow said urgently, “Which is all very nice and affirming and everything, except that there’s a good chance that the effort of removing the bomb from Wesley will cause me to black out and drop it, turning this hotel and everything in it into one blinding flash immediately followed by a big burning crater. If I didn’t have to be here – I would definitely want to be on the other side of that barrier and I think you all should be too.”

“I will lend you what power I still possess.” Illyria was so beautiful, Willow found herself thinking. She tried not to become hypnotized by her but it was difficult not to just stare and stare. Even though she was so inhuman, so chill and cool, like something made of marble that somehow walked and talked, there was something mesmerising in her pale blue eyes; and she liked the blue, really, as with the green on Lorne, it just suited her. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t have rather it was Fred standing here right now, because she so would a million times over, for Fred’s sake and for Wesley’s. She’d liked that sweet brainy talkative girl more than almost anyone she’d ever met. But, ironically, the strength an ancient god-king-blue-demony thing possessed might be a lot more use to her right now than even the humanity and brilliance of the fallen Fred. Illyria continued to gaze at her unblinkingly. “It is for Wesley’s sake that you risk your own life. He is…that is…he is of value to me.”

“He’s of value to all of us,” Gunn told her. 

“So’s Willow,” Buffy added quietly. “And I don’t want her getting bent or broken. So, I suggest we pool our strength and our know-how and find a way to defuse Wes which doesn’t get us atomised in the process.”

Xander nodded. “I’m with Buffy on the not-dying aspects of this plan. I mean I’ll make the grand heroic gesture, certainly, but I’d quite like to get the credit for it without having to give up any vital organs or extremities.”

Lorne downed his drink. “Well, I suggest a good night’s sleep, kittens. Well, okay, a few hours sleep at any rate. We’re going to need all the juice we can muster tomorrow to astrally Saran-wrap this place, not to mention making with the Rififi vibe as you Mission Impossible the nastiness out of our ticking time bomb boy.”

After a brief pause to translate what Lorne had just said into something approximating to English, Giles nodded. “Lorne’s right. Let’s grab some sleep and tackle this problem tomorrow. Willow, you’ve located the spell for the protection barrier, yes? And you know how to remove the bomb? It’s just a case of finding the inner strength and belief to accomplish those goals now. We both know you have a much better chance of succeeding if you’ve managed to replenish your energy levels.”

Buffy nodded. “Heed the brainy watcher, Will, he knows of what he speaks.”

Xander agreed solemnly: “Man in tweed speaks with tongue of truth.”

Giles looked between them resignedly. “Thank you for the – vote of confidence.”

Willow sighed and picked up the book she had been reading from which told her exactly what she needed to do while making it clear that no one witch, however powerful, could possibly do it. “I’m not going to be reading with a flashlight under the covers, I promise. But I do need to clasp this to my breast and whimper a little.”

“Whatever gets you through it,” Xander said gently.

As she passed Gunn he clasped her on the shoulder. “I know you can do this.”

“Sweetcakes,” Lorne nodded to her, “I don’t pretend my empathy is as finely tuned as it used to be before I got mixed up with this bunch of crazies, but you have to have one of the most open auras I ever encountered. Anagogic, nothing, I could pick you up on a _cellphone_ , and let me tell you that when _I_ tell you I know you can do this, I _know_ you can do this. You can and you will. As long as you believe in yourself and do like the handsome Watcher told you and go and get your six hours of the dreamless.”

Willow was still clasping the book to her chest but she straightened up a little at that and nodded. “Positive thinking. I can do that.”

Lorne patted her on the arm. “That’s the spirit, little red riding hood.” Only when she was out of earshot did he pour himself a Sea Breeze that everyone noticed was very heavy on the vodka.

“When Willow was humming…?” Gunn broke off. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“Willow isn’t who’s twanging my radar, cupcake. It’s Wesley who’s making my fillings sing. I’d like to look into that boy’s future sometime and have it appear a little different.”

“Does it look like a big burning crater?” Xander enquired.

“No.” Lorne downed another drink with a few gulps. “It looks the way it always does – like a big ominous crossroads without a signpost in sight. I don’t know what that boy’s future is meant to be any more. Ever since Angel went off the rails with Darla, the world’s been shifted. It’s all about choices now. The ones we made, the ones still to make, and last time Wesley came up to a crossroads like this he took the wrong path.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying, pastrycakes, is that we can do this for him, sure enough, and maybe not kill ourselves in the process, but this is just the first step. There’s still a long way to go before that boy is back on his path again. I just hope he makes it.”

“And so say all of us.” They all turned in surprise to see Spike leaning in the doorway, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He leant across to chink it against Lorne’s glass. “If anyone can give him a shot it’s Red and say what you like about Watchers – and trust me, I have many a time – they can make more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. They’re like Orloi Demons. Even if you rip their hearts out, they still keep going through the motions until they get their second wind. I reckon life’s been kicking Wes where it hurts since he was barely out of nappies, but underneath the death wish I reckon there has to be a hunger for life in there somewhere. He just has to remember how it feels to be glad to be alive.”

“He says he does,” said Buffy quietly. “He says he wants to live.”

Spike nodded. “Good start then and I guess that makes it up to the rest of us to make sure he does. See you all first thing then for the hand-holding, chanting and odds on chance of getting blown to smithereens.”

“You’re staying?” Xander looked at him in confusion. “But you don’t even…”

“Wes is a mate.” Spike shrugged and then glanced across at Illyria. “And me and the blue meanie here, we’ve got kind of an understanding, shared bond if you like.”

“Based on having really freaky hair?” 

“Based on wishing we’d shown more sense than to fall in love with a stupid human that could up and die on us any minute but knowing that’s just the way it is now and as we can’t make it stop hurting we may as well embrace the pain.” He deliberately didn’t look at Buffy although she did give him a look of genuine compassion.

Illyria put her head on one side. “You mean the hollow place inside of us that feels as if it can never be filled?”

“And that damned warmth you get when they smile at you, like you’re warm again, like you’re alive, yeah, that’s the one.”

“If Wesley were to die...” Illyria flinched. “Even at the thought of such a happening the hollow feeling is there; it aches with cold, like ice upon flesh.”

“And it never goes away.” Spike glanced across at Buffy. “Not if they die on you. Never goes away. I know how it feels. Don’t want you feeling it too. Not your fault you hollowed out a human the rest of us loved and you’re all that’s left of her now. Don’t want you feeling empty for the rest of eternity. And like I said, Wes is a mate. Don’t say I can do much in the way of magic tricks but I can hold hands and look like a plonker as well as Long John Harris. Maybe some vampire strength wouldn’t go amiss either.”

Illyria put her head on one side and gazed at Xander curiously. “I think I understand this reference. You mock his infirmity?”

“It’s what we do when something hurts, Illyria. Doesn’t stop the pain but it makes it look as if it isn’t getting to you. See that eye patch of his? The son of a bitch who put out his eye did it right in front of me. I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Was fast enough to kill I don’t know how many but I wasn’t fast enough – ”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Xander looked at him in surprise and dawning realization repeating gently: “It wasn’t your fault. You want to beat yourself up about the people you killed when you didn’t have a soul, be my guest, but this one isn’t on your conscience.”

As Spike began to shake his head, Xander cut in again: “You know I’m nothing if not honest when it comes to how I feel where you’re concerned, Spike, so believe me when I say there was nothing more you could have done than what you did. As far as I’m concerned you’re the reason I still have one eye left.”

Illyria flinched. “This room is full of pain and fear.”

“That’s what feeling means sometimes,” Giles told her. “What it means to be human or half human or once human or corrupted by humanity just because you’re capable of loving them. But there are other feelings too. There’s…”

Illyria quoted softly: “‘There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy... that your life will lead you to some joy... that after everything... you can still be surprised.’“

They all looked at her in surprise, Lorne getting it first. “ _Wesley_ said that to you?”

“Yes.”

Lorne looked across at Gunn who smiled for the first time in what felt like a very long time. “Maybe he’s not so far off his path as you think.”

Lorne smiled back at him. “Maybe he’s not at that.”

***

Wesley woke to an empty bed. The panic flared at once; a spike of fear in his chest; perhaps more like a stake. They’d told him so many times in that hell dimension that Angel was dead. Sometimes they sprinkled dust on him while he snatched one of his fitful hours of sleep; mostly they just smeared blood across the bars of the cage and told him to guess who had lost the last fight. Some of the demons found humans fuckable in that dimension and told him so in great detail; what they’d do to him the day his protector was dead; as if he’d care if Angel was dead anyway; as if anything would matter then. He’d shrugged at them, making them angry and spiteful; one had grabbed him through the bars and pulled him up against them, clawed hands exploring. Wesley had elbowed it hard in the chest but he’d been weakened by starvation, lack of sleep, and too many beatings, and the blow had only made it grunt and tell him that he liked it when they wriggled. Angel had finished one bout so fast the impatient one had still been groping him through the bars as Angel was marched back to the cage. Angel had snapped the demon’s neck so fast it had never had time to finish its sentence. Angel had been grabbed back by the shocked guards, beaten to the ground, but he’d still been smiling as he licked the demon blood from his fingers, eyes yellow as he gazed at them all with awful promise.

“You’d better make sure I’m dead and dusted before any of you ever even think about touching Wes again...”

But it hadn’t been in a bed with clean sheets, in a room in the Hyperion, so even though Angel wasn’t here, this instant, as he awoke, that didn’t mean he was dead. Wesley snatched some deep breaths, calming his heart rate. Angel was fine. He just wasn’t here. He couldn’t always be here, babysitting his crazy friend, telling him everything was okay, that the world was still round, well – an oblate spheroid – that night still followed day; that they weren’t in a hell dimension any longer. Wesley needed to take on that task himself.

Today he was going to get up unaided and not whimper for Angel. That would be a start. 

He didn’t remember the bomb until he was showering. He was halfway through his checklist at the time: Angel – still undead; Cordelia – dead; Gunn – alive; Fred – dead; Lorne – alive; Lilah – dead; Illyria – technically alive, he supposed, although he wasn’t sure if she had a heart that beat, not of her own, it would be Fred’s heart. Fred… He started crying. It always shocked him how the tears came so hot and fast of their own accord. A quick gush of grief and then they dried to a salt sting on his face. It was better when it happened in the shower; he could wash away the evidence quickly. He snatched a breath and continued doggedly. Spike – undead; Giles – alive; Buffy – that took some thought. Dead? Alive? He was sure he remembered her being dead. Oh, that was right, she’d been resurrected by Willow. Willow who was also – alive…

And that was when he remembered the bomb. He put his fingers to his chest and tried to feel it, but there was nothing, no scar where the mark of ownership had been, no pulsing tick of an explosive device. A mystical bomb, of course, but it was still difficult not to imagine it as two sticks of dynamite attached to an alarm clock. To wonder how there was possibly room for it inside of him.

“Wes…? Wes…!”

Panic from Angel. Absurd because he had vampire hearing and could surely hear the shower was running.

“I’m in here.”

“Oh.” Angel yanked back the curtain to look at him sheepishly. “I was scared you’d run out on us – pulled one of those stupid self-sacrificing stunts you’re so full of.”

“I only just remembered the bomb. I haven’t had time to do anything stupid about it yet.” Wesley waited for Angel to apologize for interrupting his shower and then realized he wasn’t going to. That was pretty…typical. “As you’re here could you hand me a towel?”

“Oh – sure.” Angel handed one over, still very comfortable with Wesley being naked. It was a little disturbing to find that it didn’t bother Wesley either. Even though he distinctly remembered being the boy who had gone to all kinds of contortions behind his towel to get into his swimming trunks without anyone else seeing him naked at school. Apparently Angel didn’t count as someone else now; Angel was just an extension of himself. 

Wesley frowned. “Does that mean I’m half dead?”

Angel made a little gesture with his finger, the ‘run back the reel’ motion. “I didn’t get the first half of that conversation.”

Wesley wrapped the towel around his waist. “Just thinking that it’s strange we’re so connected.”

“Not really. Most married couples don’t get to go through what we’ve been through together.” Angel said it with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Wesley realized he was more than comfortable with their togetherness, he was proud of it. 

“You like it.” 

Angel handed him another towel for his hair. There was that sheepish look again. “Yeah, well… you ran off.”

“What?”

“With Lilah. Then there was the Fred thing. And Illyria. You started hanging out with Spike more than you did with me.”

“That was me punishing you for stealing my memories,” Wesley pointed out. “You didn’t notice the pursed lips?”

“I did. I hate the pursed lips. You’re my best friend, Wes. I like that you’re my best friend. I don’t like it when you act like someone else is your best friend, or as if you don’t need me.”

Wesley blinked in surprise. “You must love this version of me. Super-Dependent Wesley.”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t expected that level of honesty and gaped at Angel in shock.

Angel sighed. “I hate what was done to you. I hate what that place was like. But I like you needing me.”

Wesley remembered for the first time in perhaps a very long time that Angel was as vulnerable as he was underneath that swift-healing skin. “Angel, I’m not going to be this clingy and needy forever, perhaps not even for very much longer – well, not for longer than a few hours if this bomb goes off – but that won’t mean I don’t need you. The problem has always been how _much_ I need your friendship, not how little.”

“It felt…wrong when we weren’t friends. Like a part of me was missing. I never really had a friend before Doyle. Losing him hurt so much I thought it had to be a mistake. Then you came along – I was so determined not to go down that road again, but you made me care way too much way too fast. And you’re so fragile, you humans, so breakable. I knew it was a bad idea.”

“While, of course, I knew that working for a vampire was the bestest idea ever.”

Angel grinned at him. “Hey, you’re all…snippy – you’re you again.”

They smiled at one another and Wesley felt the skittery feeling in his heart get less. That was always the trouble with Angel, the way he could make everything feel right and safe. He and Cordelia had discussed that problem more than once. How Angel could say something or just look at them sometimes and suddenly everything felt all right again. It was a terrible power. He opened his mouth to tell him that he didn’t regret any of it; not the crazy-making things, the pain and the separation, the losses, because it had been the right road he’d taken after all, when he’d told Angel he was his faithful servant; that for all their betrayals and disagreements, their times of estrangement and anger with one another, they had given each other purpose and direction and a path to follow that led to something meaningful. They had given each other hope when no one else could have done. Perhaps most of all they had given each other the kind of friendship that only came along once or twice in a lifetime and should never be given up without one hell of a fight.

Then he realized he didn’t need to say it because Angel must know it too; how good he’d been for him; how much better Wesley’s life was because of knowing him; the feeling of purpose and accomplishment, not to mention feeling loved by people whose opinions he cared about and respected, but most of all the _belonging_.

“Willow thinks she can defuse it. The bomb.” Angel nodded awkwardly at his chest. “She’s going to put a protective barrier around the Hotel first. Spike and Illyria are investigating portals.”

“I’m good with portals.” Wesley tossed the towel with which he’d been drying his hair onto the old fashioned radiator and went back into the bedroom. He could dress himself. That was something he hadn’t been able to do a week ago. Feed himself. Knew who he was, where he was. Okay, not first thing after waking up, but within ten minutes or so all the memories were back in pretty much their correct order. “I could help.”

“Illyria says she knows – that she…” Angel broke off awkwardly.

“She has Fred’s memories, of course.” Wesley tried to wrench his face out of that tight hurting expression it was determined to set into. “A powerful god-king with the knowledge of a brilliant physicist. Quite a warrior for the forces of good. How ironic when she was brought back to destroy the world with her legions of doom.”

“She’s only a warrior for the forces of good because of you, Wes. Because of her…feelings for you.”

Wesley pulled on his jeans, liking the feel of them against his bare, slightly wet skin; sensation was still a pleasure, any sensation that wasn’t pain or hunger or being dirty or cold or bruised or branded. He liked the way the denim felt so clean, the way it wanted to cling to his wet legs, the snug way it could be pulled over his ass, buttoned up, making him feel efficient, protected. He noticed the way Angel was looking at him, that pleading look again. He sighed. “I’m not in love with Illyria, Angel. I am in love with Fred. I do have feelings for Illyria but they’re too complicated for me to understand, let alone explain. She needs me.”

“I need you,” Angel countered at once, sounding petulant and childish, which, for some reason, Wesley found only endearing. “She and Spike have been bonding.”

“We were only away three weeks in their time.”

“They’ve been bonding a lot.” Angel sighed. “She can’t be who she is around you, Wes. You won’t let her be Fred but Fred is who she knows you love and it’s there, in her power to look like the woman you love, sound like her, be the shell of her, and know that you’ll look at her the way you used to look at Fred. When she’s with Spike, she’s Illyria. She can learn to be the Illyria she is now – the one with lessened powers and a human body and these human emotions she can’t really understand.”

“You think she’s better off without me?” Wesley felt hurt by that. He liked to think he’d been good for Illyria, and being with Illyria had made him feel like a Watcher again; someone to guide and teach; someone so powerful, incapable of inflicting such great harm or doing so much good, and him trying to show her why doing good was better.

“No, of course not…” Angel rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean… Wes, do you remember everything now?”

“Yes. Or rather…” Wesley conceded the point with a shrug. “I don’t know what I’ve forgotten but it feels as if all the pieces are more or less in place.”

“How useful were you, how good was your judgement, when you were in love with Fred and she was dating Gunn? Wasn’t it only when you got over it that you got your clarity back?”

“But I didn’t ‘get over it’, Angel. I just learned to live without hope.” He snatched a breath. “Actually, that’s overly melodramatic. I learned to accept that her friendship was very valuable to me – having lost it, I was grateful to have it back again, to be someone she trusted again. I found comfort in trying to be a good friend.”

“Well, Illyria isn’t at that stage yet. She’s never been in love before. She’s still in the burning fiery furnace of first infatuation and she doesn’t know how it can be that she feels like this when you’re supposed to be an ant she hardly bothers to step on and yet every waking minute is spent thinking about you.”

“It’s not a real feeling,” Wesley pointed out. “She was just…contaminated by human emotions when she stole a human body. She needs to find a way to separate herself from…her body’s previous owner.”

Angel shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think she got whammied by Fred’s emotions, yes, but I also think she’s the pupil with a crush on her teacher and Galatea in love with Pygmalion.”

“I didn’t shape her. Knox did.”

“She got hit by Fred’s neurons at the moment of her…resurrection, didn’t she? Fred was good. Fred cared about right and wrong. I think it’s buried in Illyria now – an unwanted conscience.”

Wesley’s eyes widened. “He said Fred’s soul was destroyed at the moment when she was taken over by Illyria. What if it was absorbed?”

Angel nodded. “I think that’s her problem. She’s been contaminated by humanity. She’s more ancient than anything still walking the earth, and newborn a few months ago. She’s a sweet brilliant good human being and a conscienceless predator who knows we should all bow down before her. Knox was her servant – of no interest to the god-king part, and he betrayed Fred and all humanity to try to suck up to a demon destroyer – not likely to win him too many cool points with what’s left of Fred.”

“There’s nothing left of Fred.” Wesley turned away.

“Wes…? The point I was making is that Knox is nothing. But you – you risked your life to try to stop Illyria and then you showed her kindness because it was the right thing to do. And Fred would be moved by that. The parts of Fred that survived…”

“Angel, nothing of Fred survived. You can’t be half-alive.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. Let’s be honest. You’re not Liam. Liam was human. You’re a vampire. You’re not Angelus. Angelus was a soulless killer. You have a soul. You’re only Angel. However much you may remember how it felt to be Liam, how it felt to be Angelus, you’re not those people any more. Fred was what she was, and what she was is gone. There’s only Illyria now, even if Illyria may have some lingering echoes of Fred.”

“I think she’s like Darla was in the hours before she gave birth to Connor – contaminated by a human soul. She’s capable of love. Darla was. And self sacrifice. She’s just confused and bothered by these feelings she has no experience of feeling. You’re the first thing she’s ever loved in her millennia of existence. You’re her first crush.”

“And you think she needs to get over it?”

“I’m not sure she can be who she is until she has. At some point she has to want to do good because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s what she thinks you want her to do. Otherwise she’s only ever going to be…well, as retarded as Spike.”

Wesley looked at him for a moment. “This wouldn’t be due to you not liking to share your friends and wanting all my attention fixed on you so I’m always there at your beck and call to do your research and bind up your wounds and tell you how wonderful you are, would it?”

Angel licked his lips reflexively. “No. Well, okay – yes, but it’s still sound reasoning.”

Wesley half-laughed and pulled on a t-shirt and then a sweater. They were clothes Gunn had put there for him, he remembered; clean and well pressed, but not new; he remembered this t-shirt, this sweater; he remembered the snagged thread there… He examined it and was reassured by it. His life was still intact and there had been so many good moments as well as bad ones. He looked up at Angel in surprise. “I can remember Cordelia without it hurting. I remember her smile. Do you remember?”

“I remember.” Angel looked fragile, liable to fragment, voice wistful. “She could light up a room.”

“I remember her drinking tequila and telling me I got the blame. I miss her.” Seeing Angel’s expression he swallowed the rest of what he was thinking. How glad he was that he’d got to know her, even if her time on the earth had been much too short; how much he would have hated to go through life and _not_ know Cordelia Chase. Wesley frowned. “Our lives are…”

“I’m sorry,” Angel said awkwardly. “For what was done to you both. The visions and the pain and…everything.”

“She could have died during the Mayor’s Ascension, Angel,” Wesley reminded him gently. “And never found a purpose.”

“Her purpose got her killed.”

“Perhaps she died contented. Perhaps she’s still doing good work somewhere.” There was so much more he wanted to say but Angel’s attention was straying, his superior hearing evidently picking up sounds of activity downstairs. “Is it time?”

“Time for you to have breakfast.” Angel took him by the elbow. “Do you want eggs?”

Wesley looked at him sideways. “Is this a condemned man thing?”

“No, it’s an ‘I cook great eggs’ thing. So – do you want eggs?”

“Is there toast?”

“There can be. And tea made in the pot. And proper silverware and napkins.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Wesley admitted. He let Angel lead him down to breakfast, thinking as he did so that he really hadn’t managed to convey to Angel at all that he didn’t regret the life he’d had, despite the physical pain and the sanity-crushing misery that had afflicted him at times; the sense of purpose had been there every day except when he’d been cast out from this dysfunctional family of theirs. _My friends forsake me like a memory lost_. That had been like Sunnydale again, only so much worse, because those people had simply failed to warm to him, they hadn’t loved him once then ceased to care. But as long as he was part of the mission, part of Angel’s mission, he was happy; even when he was miserable there was a part of him that had always felt fulfilled. That was why he’d never nagged Cordelia to try to get rid of the visions, because he understood only too well how one could be in physical pain and yet still feel as if this was the only right and fitting path to follow. He was starting to suspect Angel didn’t really understand that. Well, if they survived Wesley having a bomb removed from his chest, British reserve or no British reserve he was definitely going to have to find a way to tell him. It seemed important that he should know.

***

“Do you understand?”

Willow looked so young, Wesley found himself thinking, intrigued. Amongst this circle of people sitting cross-legged in the lobby of the Hyperion all holding hands, she seemed positively childlike. She certainly looked no older than when he’d seen her in Sunnydale all those years ago, and even then she hadn’t looked even as old as the eighteen-year-old Buffy or Cordelia. He wondered if people like Willow were the reason humans had invented the concept of elves. She had that little upturned nose, and those huge green eyes. He couldn’t see her ears under her hair but he wouldn’t have been surprised to find they were small and pointy. He didn’t know if he was just feeling warm and fuzzy towards all humanity at the moment, due to him probably being about to take his leave of it in a big white flash, or if everything had just come into focus in a way it never had before. Either way her hair really was the most splendid colour.

“Wes, mate? You okay?”

He turned his head to see Spike looking at him curiously. He looked odd sitting there cross-legged, holding Buffy’s hand in one hand and Xander’s in the other, a candle in front of him with a wan flame sputtering a little wax and smoke. The hair dye he could understand – sort of, but why was Spike wearing eyeliner? Did Buffy like it? Surely she was a little young to have witnessed the Glam Rock age?

Angel squeezed his hand gently. “Wesley, did you understand what Willow told you?”

Wesley looked at the vampire on his left. “Willow’s _really_ pretty.”

Xander grimaced. “You know, ordinarily, I’d be right there with you on thinking that was definitely a point worth making, but just at this moment in time –”

“And her hair is really…super.”

Everyone looked at Willow who shifted self-consciously. “Thanks, I think. But, Wesley…”

He nodded in acknowledgement. “I get it. You’re all staying. I can’t make you leave. And if I try to make a run for it I’ll be pulled down like a – what was it again…?”

“Wounded gazelle,” Spike supplied helpfully. 

Wesley sighed and looked around at them, wondering as he did so if Angel and Gunn felt as silly holding hands with Lorne as they looked. “But I don’t want you all to die. I checked my To Do list very thoroughly this morning and it definitely doesn’t say ‘get half the world’s champions killed so evil can have free rein’.”

“We’re not going to die.” Buffy leaned forward to gaze intently into his eyes. “We’re going to give Willow enough of our power and know-how so that she can do this without anyone dying – including you.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.” He wondered why they couldn’t get it when it was so obvious. “There are –” He had to pause to count them: Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Illyria, Spike, Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, that made: “Nine of you. And one of me. And I’m not even sane. Giles, tell them.”

Giles sighed wearily. “I agree with them, Wesley.”

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Well, someone who doesn’t agree with them, tell them.” He looked around at them hopefully.

Lorne said gently: “We all agree with them, crumpet. Kind of why we’re all here.”

“But it’s _stupid_ ,” he pointed out.

“Hey – ” Willow pointed a finger at him imperiously. “A bit more faith in my super witchy powers, Watcher guy.”

“Sorry.” He gave her an apologetic wince. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re the best witch ever, it’s just that I don’t think it can be done.”

“Still not with the positive thinking,” she protested.

“I noticed your hair,” he offered in mitigation.

“You’ve known her for six years and you just noticed her hair?” Xander enquired.

“I noticed it at Sunnydale. I just – forgot to mention it.”

Gunn looked across at Angel. “I thought you said he was saner today?”

“Do you not like _my_ hair?” Illyria enquired.

“Yes, of course, I do. It’s…very nice. Very…blue.”

Buffy looked at Giles. “So, now I’m the only one whose hair Wesley doesn’t like?”

“I like your hair too,” Wesley protested. “I just…like Willow’s best. Because of the red and the colour and the being that shade.”

“He was pretty sane upstairs.” Angel shrugged. “I think it’s the rest of you who confuse him.”

“Wesley!” said Willow as sharply as she was capable of saying anything.

He sat up straighter at once. “Yes?”

“Do you understand what we’re going to do now?”

“We’re going to hold hands and help make a sanctuary spell to surround the hotel and stop the rest of LA getting destroyed when I go kabloom.”

“No, there will be _no_ kablooming!”

Wesley looked across at Giles. “Remind me again what the current watcher to slayer ratio is before you explain why you think risking your life for a lunatic is a good idea?”

Giles looked smug. “As you’re one of the few fully trained watchers left in the world, Wesley, that just makes for an even stronger argument for saving your life.”

“Gunn…?”

“Save your breath, English. I ain’t going anywhere unless you’re going there too.”

“Sanctuary spell!” Willow said sharply.

Everyone started guiltily. 

“You have to _concentrate_ ,” she reminded them.

“We’re right there with you on the concentrating,” Buffy assured her.

“Oh, and the candle lighting!” Xander noticed that his was the only one not yet lit and leant across to do so hastily, using Spike’s candle as a match.

“Are you sure Wes doing the mojo isn’t going to set off his inner nitro?” Gunn enquired.

“Pretty sure.” Willow smiled a little wanly. “And we do need his um…mojo.”

Illyria said, “Fred liked to watch Wesley perform magic spells, she found it…what is that emotion humans feel when they become warm throughout all of their body and with heightened awareness of all physical sensations, particularly their proximity to another?”

“Horny.” Spike grimaced at her. “And thanks for sharing but maybe another time with the reminiscences, pet?”

Wesley looked at Illyria in confusion. “Fred – what…?”

Lorne sighed. “Think of the effect it used to have on Gomez when Morticia spoke French, cherry pie, then adapt to Fred watching you do magic.”

“Who’s Gomez?” Wesley asked in bewilderment.

“And we would all be concentrating now, yes?” Willow said frostily.

“Wait, is it a side effect of Wesley doing magic?” Buffy demanded. “I mean is anyone sitting near him going to react like that? Because I have a thing about not being attracted to Watchers – because of the supremely high squick factor.”

“He’s only an ex-Watcher,” Gunn offered.

“Once a Watcher always a Watcher,” Buffy insisted. “I don’t want to be sitting here feeling all…lustified about Wesley.”

Wesley darted a nervous glance in her direction. “I really don’t think that’s likely to be a problem.”

“I’m changing places. I should be holding Willow’s hand anyway. In case she needs Slayer strength.”

“I was lending her magical assistance,” Giles protested.

“Well, lend it to Spike instead.”

“It was a Fred thing, Slayerlicious,” Lorne assured Buffy.

“I also feel it when I witness Wesley performing magical rites,” Illyria observed.

Gunn held up a hand. “I don’t.”

“Me neither.” Spike moved over so that Giles could take Buffy’s place. “And I’d like to go on record on that.”

“A Fred and Illyria thing then.” Lorne rolled his eyes. “Have we finished playing non-musical non-chairs yet?”

“And _concentrating_ would be a good idea around now unless people are particularly eager to be blown into a million billion itsy bitsy pieces!”

Everyone looked sheepishly at Willow and muttered apologies.

Willow took a deep calming breath, told everyone to clear their minds, concentrate, and then repeat after her the following words.

She knew the spell so well it was difficult to remember to wait for them to repeat it after her. Make of us the world within. Make the walls of this building as the walls between the worlds. Let nothing pass between them, no light, nor fire, nor breath, nor sound. Make this a true sanctuary from the world without, and protect the world without from the world within….

She could feel it, the flow of power; not just her own, but the Slayer strength of Buffy, so positive, so free of doubt, the ancient darkness of Illyria with that golden thread twisted within it; that was what she was now; a thing of darkness wrapped around a thread of light, the light bleeding into the darkness more and more. Was that what humanity looked like – a beautiful infection? There was Giles. He had so much strength of purpose. And Wesley – he was powerful; he felt tangled but the power that he was lending her was focused as light through a crystal; oh, that was Angel, demon power, heavy as tar, and Spike, lighter, sort of tinny, but still strong; and Lorne, oh how sweet that his power was green too, or perhaps she was just picturing it that way? Either way she could feel it; a pulse of energy from someone who knew instinctively the ins and outs of magic. And Xander and Gunn, they were sending her human strength, the perfect balance to all this demonic power; warm and unblemished. This was a colossal spell; she could feel it building, its demand building also, sucking in energy greedily as it prepared for that whiplash of light and blue and…

Willow gasped and felt herself enveloped in light, white and searing yet not painful at all; and then the ground shimmered and shuddered and she felt the spell work. She snatched a breath and opened her eyes. 

“It’s done.”

They were all gazing at her open mouthed. She blinked. “What?”

“That was awesome,” Gunn said.

Wesley looked at her curiously. “I had no idea you were so powerful.”

Willow inclined her head. “Kind of a side effect of trying to destroy the world – well, of letting all the magic flow into me and it sort of – stuck. Giles can explain it better.”

“You rule,” Buffy told her.

“Does anyone else need a cigarette?” Spike enquired reaching for one.

Looking around the circle, Willow noticed that they all looked a little flushed and breathless. “It was a group spell, not group…other thing.”

“All the same – most fun I’ve had in a while,” Xander admitted. As Spike offered him a drag on the cigarette he said, “I don’t… oh, okay…” He took a deep drag and then offered it to Giles who looked distinctly tempted but shook his head.

“No, thank you, I really have given up.”

“If I’d known we were doing these kind of spells I’d’ve got in some Mary Jane and snacks,” Spike observed.

“Who’s Mary Jane?” Wesley asked.

Gunn sighed. “Not ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ And it’s weed, Wes.”

Wesley blinked in confusion. “Dill? Sage? What?”

Willow looked across at Buffy. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“It’s adorable,” Buffy admitted. “They have like – no life at all at that Watchers’ School place, do they?” Seeing Giles’ expression, she said quickly, “Not that I know what Spike’s talking about either, because I so don’t.”

“None of us do,” Willow assured him. “Because…”

“Because you went to the only university on the planet in which there was no recreational drug-taking of any kind,” said Giles wearily. “Yes, Willow, I know.” He held a hand out to Xander. “I’ve changed my mind about that cigarette.”

“I would like to try human sexual intercourse,” Illyria observed to no one in particular. “It was an experience which Fred regarded as being most pleasurable but I have not yet been able to sample it for myself.”

“Wes still not putting out, love?” Spike accepted the cigarette back from Giles and leaned across to offer it to her. “He can’t help it. He’s English.”

“Given his condition, it wouldn’t exactly be a good idea even if there wasn’t the off the scale weirdass factor,” Gunn pointed out.

Spike shrugged. “That would certainly be going out with a bang anyway.”

“ _You’re_ English,” Angel pointed out to Spike. “That’s why you have that horrible accent.” He added quickly to Wesley: “Not that your accent is horrible. It isn’t. It’s…nice. But Spike’s is horrible.”

“Different era though. I’m from the days when being English meant you got to rule the world and oppress the natives, not that you were a tea-drinking nancy boy who didn’t know which way of a girl was up.” Spike glanced across at Giles and Wesley. “No offence. Well, not much.”

Illyria tentatively tried smoking the cigarette, coughed and handed it to Gunn. “I do not care for this pastime.”

“Very wise.” Gunn looked at the cigarette and then shook his head. “I don’t smoke and spells don’t make me horny – although as spells go, that one was pretty tight.”

Angel took it from him. “Well, give it to those of us who do. Smoke, I mean. Or – used to anyway.”

“Do you mind?” Lorne snatched it back. “I still do. And am about to. You can have a cigarette when you’re wearing leather pants and minus a soul, just – not one of mine.”

Willow pointedly waved the smoke away from where she was sitting. “If everyone has finished being all…post-coital we need to do the next spell on account of Wesley exploding if we don’t. Which, in case anyone isn’t really sure on that issue, would not be a good thing.”

“You had me with ‘exploding’,” Gunn assured her.

Wesley shrugged. “I’ve never exploded before. If you think about it, you’re denying me a unique experience.”

“Have you ever been hurt by a really pissed off witch before?”

He looked at Willow’s expression and hastily took Angel and Spike’s hands in his. “And I’m concentrating. And shutting up. I hope you’re noticing the shutting up.”

“Perhaps if you shut up for long enough, I might.” As Wesley opened his mouth to say something else, Willow added: “Remember when I told you about the time I flayed a man alive…?”

Wesley closed his mouth again with an audible click and everyone hastily held hands.

“Now, if I have your attention….”

Willow felt Buffy tighten her grip on her hand; a sympathetic squeeze to let her know that she at least knew how dangerous this was, and how difficult.

“I don’t have a death wish,” Buffy whispered to her. “And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know you could do this.”

It was a surprise to feel Illyria also tighten her grip on Willow’s hand a careful fraction. Willow glanced at the blue eyed god-king and the gaze that looked at her was unblinking as ever but by no means emotionless. There was absolutely no fear of death there for herself – himself? itself? She would stick with ‘herself’ as Illyria certainly looked female whatever her essence might be made from. But there was anxiety all the same. Willow squeezed Buffy’s hand back and let it flow into her again, Slayer power, god-king power, then the connection was taken up, and there was Giles, half-Watcher power, half-Witch power from the coven. Xander’s humanity, that was an extra warmth; she almost smiled as she felt it flow into her, and Spike – chilly and still a little tinny but powerful all the same, the strength of a soul and a demon combined. Then Wesley – he really did have some powerful mojo there, enough to tip the balance perhaps; it didn’t matter that his mind was all woolly and fragmented or that he didn’t even seem to much care if he lived or died; inside there was all that strength and power and knowledge – just as well he was on the side of the good guys, really. Then Angel – oh and that was _strong_ – so powerful, that soul of his all dark and treacly and golden, and the demon strength of Angelus buried within him, raw energy; that appealed to her in particular, using evil rocket fuel to jet propel that bomb out of Wesley. Lorne, definitely green, those tendrils of subtle power from him, good to the core; and Gunn, pure humanity again, concentrating so hard on trying to lend her his strength she could feel it flowing from him. And Illyria again, and Buffy, still, and it was flowing into her, power and more power. She had to dismiss her instinctive fear that the power might prove too much, might find a way to corrupt her. This was good magic for a good purpose and she was a good witch and –

There was the bomb. She could see it so clearly now. Even though the air around her was shimmering, within herself everything was still, focused. There was a raindrop poised on the very end of a leaf, the ground was shaking but she was keeping the leaf still; the tree was waving in the breeze but she was balancing the leaf and the raindrop didn’t fall. No need to fight the earthquake or the deep roots of the tree, just to lend a little power to the leaf. This was all she had to do here. The bomb was glowing; silvery white; and there was its delicate heart so perfectly balanced. 

It had come to her this morning that she needed to enlist the bomb’s aid in defusing it. Not take it to a place it had never meant to be or try to freeze it while it struggled against its bonds; but to nudge it to remember the way it had been before; like reminding a full grown man holding an armalite that he’d once known the safety of his mother’s womb; play on the yearning of every evolving thing to return to that earlier state of being. The heart of the bomb, the beating, ticking, dangerous heart, could remain still as the tendrils slid back in, just like that, as they had been before; that was all it needed to do to pass from one state of readiness to another earlier one. And now the tendrils were out of Wesley’s body and back inside the bomb and she was holding the heart still so it felt exactly as it had done when the tendrils were connected; she was singing it a mystical lullaby and it was returning now, the heart slowing and then stopping as it became what it had been before; something in readiness, something waiting to be activated; now it was sleeping. It was ready to become what it had briefly dreamed it was. She just needed to nudge it to make it remember that it didn’t belong here; not yet. Not in this form. It needed to remember further back, much further back to what it had been before even this; to a time when it had been incomplete. For a moment everything wavered; she felt the power source from Wesley falter for just an instant and she saw the leaf almost shake, a pre-motion when the raindrop might fall, but then the power flickered back on again, like a light bulb in a thunderstorm, and she had the bomb firmly within her spell. It was whole, it was components, it was the metal and magic from which those components were made. It was atoms. It was the dust of life and death and other matter tossed upon the wind. It was scattered into space….

Willow gasped and fell forward, Buffy and Illyria both catching her. She heard Angel say: “Wes? Wes?” And tried to open her eyes. Unfortunately someone seemed to have cemented them closed at the same time they had bathed her in grey sweat and pulled the bones out of her arms and legs. She slumped against Buffy and smelt her familiar scent, heard her whisper: “I’ve got you, Will, I’ve got you,” and then everything went peacefully dark for a while.

 

“Is she okay? Is she breathing?”

Giles checked Willow’s pulse and hastened to reassure Xander. “She’s quite well. Just – recharging her batteries.”

“Wes?” Angel was anxiously cradling Wesley and Giles hurried over to check on him too. 

The ex-watcher was unconscious and a little clammy, but his heartbeat when Giles listened to it was steady and regular.

“Is it a coma?” Gunn demanded. “Man, I hate comas.”

“I think it’s a deep sleep.” Giles checked Wesley’s pulse and it was a little rapid at first but then slowed to normality. “We’re all a little drained but it would have hit him harder because of his less than tip top physical shape.”

Willow gasped and woke up to find Buffy and Xander gazing at her anxiously. For a spit second she wondered where Oz was, then Tara, then, as she groped her way back to consciousness, Kennedy, before she remembered that she had been needed in Cleveland with Faith and Wood to guard the second Hellmouth and take care of Dawn. “Is Wesley okay?” she said hoarsely.

“He didn’t blow up.” Xander glanced over at him. “Hence the not deadness of us.”

“He’s fine, Willow. He’s asleep.”

Willow looked at him anxiously. “I drained his batteries.”

“They weren’t exactly charged up that high to start off with,” Spike shrugged. “You did it, Red. Got rid of the bomb.”

“I just need to check.” She staggered to her feet, very grateful to find herself being steadied as she swayed. It was a shock to find it was Illyria’s hand on her arm, those unblinking blue eyes gazing into hers intently. 

“You have saved Wesley. I am experiencing feelings of gratitude and liking for you,” she said.

Willow managed a wan smile, hoping that as well as inheriting Fred’s crush on Wesley Illyria hadn’t inherited Fred’s brief crush on her because, unlike Buffy, she wasn’t really into making out with the undead. “Oh, you’re welcome. All in a day’s…witching. Can I see?” She tottered over to where Angel was cradling him anxiously.

“Angel, he really is okay,” Giles assured him, with more resignation than impatience.

Willow was grateful for the hand Lorne held out to her. “His aura’s kind of cloudy,” the green demon frowned. “As much as I can tell without him singing for me anyway, but I’m not sensing an about-to-detonate vibe any more, are you?”

Willow concentrated, closing her eyes and feeling her way inside Wesley, searching for anything magical concealed within him. She should have done this before, of course, instead of just assuming those sigils were his only connection to the dimension from which he’d escaped. It had just seemed so…intrusive, and he’d already had to be looked at by everyone when he was naked, and Angel wasn’t really being big on the letting him have personal space issue, and it just seemed important somehow that she didn’t go poking around inside him. She wasn’t making that mistake again. She concentrated harder and found nothing of the bomb remaining; not even a memory. She sighed in relief.

“It’s gone. No more kabloom. He’s safe.” She swayed again and found Lorne holding her upright.

“Easy there, my red hot chilli pepper of witchery. That was quite a spell you cast, and I don’t mean just the one over my heart, although I have to tell you, sweetness, you ever decide to stray towards a wailing for a demon lover place, my ass is yours.”

“That’s sweet,” Willow told him, wondering if all of Angel’s people were just really…sex-starved. “I think. And I didn’t do it. We did it. All of us. And I’m not just saying that to be all modest, I’m saying you should probably go eat a Snickers bar, all of you, or drink blood or eat a nice petrie dish, if that’s your preference, because I think I probably drained you all pretty flat.”

“You may have a point.” Spike tossed aside the cigarette he’d lit. “It’s been a long time since Gunn looked tasty to me.”

“Back off, blondie bear,” Gunn told him witheringly. He bent over Wesley, whom Angel was still cradling. “We need to get him to bed, Angel. Let him sleep it off. Recharge his mojo juice.” Then put a hand to his head and staggered. “And – Willow may have a point about the Snickers bar.”

“If you’re human, sit down,” Lorne suggested. “If you’re possessed of super Slayer strength or demon power – can you get me another Sea Breeze? I’m right out.”

Angel rose to his feet with Wesley clasped in his arms. “I’ll stay with him. Make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, because that’s just what he needs right now.” Spike rolled his eyes. “Nothing like a psychotically over-protective blood sucker watching over you when you’ve just had some mystical TNT yanked out of your wotsit.”

Angel didn’t deign to reply, carrying Wesley up the stairs as if he was auditioning for a role in a bad Gothic novel. Gunn looked after them and shook his head. “Angel really needs to get a life.”

“Or a pet,” Buffy suggested brightly. As they all looked down their noses at the suggestion, she pouted. “I wasn’t suggesting a puppy.”

“If you gave Angel a cyber pet he’d break it,” Spike told her.

“You should know,” Xander observed.

“I was never his ‘pet’, all right? Him and Darla – me and Dru. Okay – and him and Dru, and Darla and Dru from time to time, but apart from that never the twain shall – well, except for that one time and I don’t think that counts on account of the…okay, maybe it was more than once but it was never when I was sober and…” Spike noticed them all looking at him expectantly and broke off. “Not a pet.”

“Is Wesley going to be normal now?” Buffy looked at Giles for enlightenment.

“No, he’s just not going to explode,” Giles reassured her. 

“Good, because I kind of like him like this. And he seems quite happy. Not maybe too big on the whole sane thing but…happy.”

“He can be happy _and_ sane,” Gunn observed from his place on the floor. “I remember it.”

“When was that then?” Spike enquired. “I think I missed it.”

“He was sane when you first came to Wolfram & Hart,” Gunn protested.

Spike gave him a look of disbelief. “He shot his father nine times at close range. He got drunk on suggestion. And when he wasn’t doing that he was looking at Angel like he was the Second Coming.”

“Oh, he always does that.” Lorne waved a dismissive hand. “And Robopop had had it coming for a _long_ time.”

“What, so you’re saying when he’s normal he still does the ‘oh Angel, you’re like the noblest champion in the whole wide world’ thing?”

“Oh yeah.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s always done that.”

Illyria observed: “Fred regarded Wesley as the sanest person she knew.”

“Well, for a start I think that says more about the kind of people Fred hung around with than Percy’s mental health and…”

Gunn frowned. “Fred did smoke an awful lot of weed growing up.”

Spike tossed his cigarette on the floor and trod on it. “That explains a lot.”

“Now he’s not going to explode we could maybe reintroduce him to society,” Buffy suggested. “Take him out. Show him the sights.”

Giles looked at her down his nose. “You cannot go on a shopping spree on the grounds that it would be good for Wesley’s rehabilitation.”

“You’re planning to take him into every public library and museum.”

“That’s different. Wesley likes libraries and museums.”

“Oh! Rare book stores!” Willow looked around at them with renewed enthusiasm. The exhaustion was still there and she really was going to get some sleep in about five minutes time. But she was also starting to realize that she had actually done it. She really had defused the bomb and Wesley really was safe because of her. “He’d love to go to some magic shops.”

“They were on _my_ list,” Giles said in mild disappointment.

Xander looked across at Gunn. “Porn cinemas and sporting events. That’s what the guy needs. And tacos.”

“Given the fact Angel won’t let him out of his sight even to take a leak, kind of a moot point, isn’t it?” Spike observed.

Illyria gazed up the stairs. “The vampire is unhealthily obsessive and jealous.”

They all looked in the same direction and then Giles sighed. “Never mind. The main objective is accomplished. Wesley is not now likely to explode even if left unattended. His previous ‘owner’ has had his very expensive mystical device banished back into the ether from whence it came and is we sincerely hope sadly out of pocket. Wesley will hopefully wake up soon, none the worse for his experience, and Angel…” He shrugged. “Well, we can worry about that later. For the moment, I really need a cup of tea.”

“Beer.” Xander looked at Gunn.

“Food,” the man countered.

They slapped hands. “We’re on it,” Xander told the others. “Give us money and we will furbish you with tasty and unhealthy food and beverages specifically designed to cause irreparable damage to your internal organs.”

“Don’t forget the booze,” Spike reminded them. “Whisky, not just beer. And some lager wouldn’t go amiss. Angel got any blood in the fridge I can nick?”

“I bought more blood this morning,” Buffy told him. “Seeing as how Angel was too obsessed and you were too lazy.”

“Thanks, pet.” Spike headed off there, swaying a little still.

“Heck of a spell, Will,” Xander told her. “Lucky you’re such a heck of a witch.”

Willow looked up the stairs again. “I just hope he’ll be okay.”

Buffy hugged her. “He’ll be fine. And it’s all because of you and your super wiccan super powers. Now, we just need to sit around and eat ourselves stupid until Wesley wakes up again.”

Willow felt reassured by Buffy’s confidence. It had felt like a normal sleep Wesley had lapsed into, it was true, and not a mystical coma, but after what had happened to Cordelia she really couldn’t bear it if she’d ended up putting Wesley into the same condition, and she thought Angel would go completely insane if he had to go through that again. She managed a smile. “You’re right. Everything’s fine. Wesley’s fine. And we should eat candy.”

“That’s my girl.” Buffy steered a wavering Willow over to the office where Giles and Spike were already arguing about whether or not a man carrying a cup of tea or a vampire carrying a cup of blood had priority passing rights. Gunn and Xander were both searching their jacket pockets for the car keys to Gunn’s truck while insisting the other one had had them last. Illyria had struck an attitude of immobile beauty at the foot of the steps and was gazing up them, presumably waiting to hear if Wesley stirred at all. Lorne was humming a pleasing ditty while mixing himself another Sea Breeze.

“You know what’s really freaky?” Buffy whispered to Willow as she helped her along.

“What?”

“The way this place is starting to seem like home.”

***


	2. Chapter 2

Wesley awoke to semi-darkness. He blinked a few times, automatically reaching for his glasses on the bedside table. He felt the base of a lamp but the switch was elusive and his fingers skimmed over the wooden surface of the table three times before he realized that his glasses simply weren’t there. He reapplied himself to trying to get the table lamp to work, finally locating a pull switch, and making himself squint painfully as the low wattage seemed abruptly as bright as daylight.

Gazing at the room, he realized with some dismay that he didn’t recognize it. He felt a brief stab of panic before the remembered that he was far from home now. In America. This was his hotel room. Probably in Sunnydale. 

He frowned as he realized that he could see. Even though his glasses were still mysteriously AWOL, he could make out the fine details. Like those clothes that had been placed on that chair nearby. Jeans, a white t-shirt, a grey-green sweater. Where was his suit? His tie? Where was his suitcase? All his notes? He tried to scan the room for it but there was nothing in sight. Perhaps it was on the other side of the room?

Wesley rolled over and – 

There was a man in the bed next to him. A _man_. In the _bed_. Next to _him_. As his heart jolted painfully in his chest with the shock of it, he realized that he, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, was naked. As in not wearing any clothes. At all. And that the maninthebednexttohim also appeared to be naked. At least he wasn’t wearing anything on his muscled torso. The muscled torso that left no doubt at all that this really was a man. In his bed. Next to him. 

Wesley dived out of the bed so fast he nearly cannoned into the chair, scrabbling backwards in confusion, away from him, the stranger, the _male_ stranger. _Ohgodohgodohgodohgod_. What had he done? What on earth had he done? 

No, this couldn’t be happening. This had to be some kind of prank being played on him by the Watchers’ Council or else….

Or else a few hours after landing in a strange country his overwhelming feeling of unreadiness for the task ahead of him had caused him to drink himself into such an insensible condition that he had let himself get picked up by a man in a bar and accompanied the man back to his hotel room. Presumably, at some point, intercourse had…

Wrapping his arms around his knees, Wesley began to rock, and then realized all over again that he was naked, and couldn’t make any of the whimpering noises he so needed to because of his terror of waking up the stranger. Internalizing his panic was making him hyperventilate. Sooner or later he was going to have to breath out and when he did he was afraid it was going to turn into a long anguished wail.

How could he possibly have screwed up already? And so monumentally, too? Two Slayers. That’s what Travers had told him. He was being entrusted with two Slayers. Two teenage girls from an alien culture were going to follow his orders and do as he told them because the Council told them so. His authority was in his office, he’d been told. The fact that _no one_ had ever done anything he told them to, even when he was Head Boy, was apparently not an issue. All he had to do was walk in there, present his credentials, do his work as a Watcher, and they would be eating out of his hand and slaying vampires under his orders. Yes, absolutely, and the moon was made of green cheese and babies were brought by the stork and watched over by the fairies at the end of the garden…. _You can do this, Wesley. You’ve been trained for this since…._ That was something to cling onto, that his preparations had at least been thorough. He’d read everything there was to read on Slayer mythology and Sunnydale in particular. Even if he couldn’t impress them with his authoritative manner perhaps he could win them over with his know-how. Not that he wasn’t going to try to be authoritative. He certainly was. He was going to walk in there with his shoulders back and look everyone in the eye, shake them firmly by the hand, introduce himself as if he didn’t have a flicker of doubt in the world, and keep reminding himself that the Watchers’ Council wouldn’t have sent him if they hadn’t believed he had it in him to do this job right. All he had to do was follow the rules. Follow them to the letter; rely on the wisdom of those who had performed this office before him – those who hadn’t got themselves sacked for becoming too emotionally invested in their charges, of course – and he wouldn’t go far wrong.

Except you’ve already gone so far wrong you can’t possibly go right now, you blithering idiot!

Wesley realized he was still rocking and not remembering to breathe and snatched a hasty intake of oxygen before daring another glance at the bed. The stranger was dark-haired with a prominent brow and looked peaceful. His body was curled around the warm place on the mattress which Wesley had left, one arm draped across the top of the pillow. He looked about Wesley’s age but much more powerfully built. He was handsome and muscular and probably quite a catch if you went in for that sort of thing. Which he apparently did now. Only with great difficulty did he manage to suppress a whimper. Oh god, what was that old joke women were always making in crowded bars, usually looking at him with amusement in their eyes as they did so?

_Question: What’s the difference between a straight man and a gay man?  
Answer: About two pints of lager. _

But that couldn’t be it, could it? It couldn’t just be that. One day he was straight if somewhat…okay, completely inexperienced, and the next he was letting strange men in airport bars pick him up and take him home for…?

_Make it a bad dream. Let me close my eyes and count to ten and when I open them again, he’s gone…._

Wesley closed his eyes. Opened them. The man slept on. He had to fight the urge to laugh hysterically. Wonderful. He had left England a straight and sober member of the Watchers’ Council and arrived in California an irresponsible gay slut. Perhaps British Airways were putting ergot in their meals? Perhaps…? Perhaps he should just find some clothes, any clothes, and sneak out of this place. Just in case he had really outdone himself this time and managed to get himself picked up by a serial killer.

He felt so sick inside with the shock of his own idiocy; except it wasn’t really a shock, was it? It was more of a ‘oh, so _that’s_ how you screwed up this time’ moment of revelation. After all, there had never really been any doubt about whether or not he would screw up, had there? It was just the time, method, and execution of the inevitable screw up that had ever been in doubt. He just hadn’t expected it to be so…sordid. Trying desperately to remember meeting the man he’d apparently shared a bed with all night there was just a blank; nothingness. Had he got drunk on the plane? So drunk he’d had to be escorted out of the airport or something? No, wait – there was a memory of the plane journey. He’d read all his notes again and got a dirty look from the guy next to him who wanted the light off while he wanted to double check the history of the Hellmouth for the fortieth time. The flight had felt endless, the in-flight movie had been moronic, the food inedible, and the seat very uncomfortable for someone with legs as long as his. He’d avoided alcohol, not thinking it was a good idea in his state of nerves. He even remembered leaving the plane, and he’d definitely been sober then. He’d had a driver waiting to take him into town. No point in renting a car. Better to just get dropped off at his hotel and then buy some transport of his own once he was settled.

But then how…? He looked back over at the man in the bed, trying to make him fit the driver, but he didn’t. They looked nothing like one another. He had no memory of arriving in Sunnydale. Just getting into the car, the driver talking about things that were meaningless to him until he’d almost snapped at him that he needed to check his notes again. A journey passed in resentful silence while he pretended it wasn’t making him car sick to keep going through these notes while the car jolted over every bump in the road. Then…nothing. 

Never mind. The main thing was to get out of this room and away from the strange man. Once he’d escaped, he could try to find out what had happened. He looked around for his clothes again but there was still no sign of them. Okay, no point in panicking. And breathing, yes, breathing would be a good idea. He snatched a quick breath. Those clothes on the chair, they would fit him. He would wear those. He would – strategically withdraw the hell out of this nightmare situation and then he would try to… Oh god, he wasn’t sure there was anything that could be done to remedy this. He supposed it could have been slightly worse. He could have woken up in bed next to a dead woman. That was about the only thing he could think of as being worse than waking up next to a live man.

As he reached out to snatch the jeans on the chair, the man on the bed opened his eyes and looked straight at him.

Wesley gasped in shock and slithered backwards on his seat. He knew he ought to say something authoritative that made it clear he wasn’t someone to be trifled with, whatever kind of…trifling had gone on the night before, but now that he was faced with the reality of being alone in a darkened bedroom with not just a strange sleeping man but a strange awake and looking straight at him one, he just felt choked with fear.

The man on the bed frowned. “Wes…? Are you okay…?”

He’d given him his real name. Wonderful, he wasn’t just someone who went in for sordid liaisons with men he’d just met, he wasn’t even intelligent enough to give his pick ups a fake name. Slutty _and_ stupid. His father would be so proud. His father. God, just – no. 

“Wes…?” The man sprang out of the bed, revealing that he was indeed entirely naked; all over; especially at the…front.

Wesley tried to back up further and realized he was wedged against a chest of drawers whose ornate handles were now digging painfully into his bare back.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Was it a nightmare? Why didn’t you wake me?”

The strange man was coming straight for him, acting as if they were…intimates. Had he had a blow to the head? Why couldn’t he _remember_?

“Wes, hey…?” The naked man crouched down in front of him and stretched out a hand.

Wesley managed a strangled: “Don’t…” Oh, that was such a pathetic whimper, but it stayed the man’s hand.

Brown eyes gazed into his that were full of concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Please, I don’t…” Wesley found he was stuck on panic. The man was so close to him; all broad shoulders and bare skin and _naked_ and very, very male, and wanting to touch him; obviously already had touched him, and he didn’t want to be touched like…that. But if he made him angry perhaps he would… Wesley swallowed. “I don’t want to….”

The stranger frowned, obviously confused. “Don’t want to what…? Wes, you’re shivering. Come on, let’s get you to back to bed.” He reached out to touch him again; a decisive sort of movement.

“No!” A strangled yelp where he would have liked something calmly authoritative but it did make the man snatch his fingers away from him as if he was burning. “No…bed…!”

“Wesley…?” The stranger sniffed the air, then sniffed _him_ and then moved back, dawning realization on his face. “You’re afraid.”

“I assure you, I –” He wanted to cry and rock; and was so ashamed of being here, being this, this pathetic snivelling naked person. “I’m not…” He couldn’t help it; even though he knew he should be firm and authoritative, the way his father was always telling him, to earn the respect of others with his demeanour and manner, he couldn’t manage it. He gazed up at the stranger, hoping against all hope that he hadn’t been so drunk or insane as to pick up someone entirely without compassion. “I’m not…”

Before he could finish his sentence, explain that he didn’t do things like this, the stranger was saying in a hurt tone, “Yes, you are. Don’t lie to me, Wes. You’re afraid of me. Why? Did you have a nightmare? Did you think I was Angelus?”

Wesley jerked his head back in shock. “Wh-what do you know of Angelus?”

“What?” The man gazed at him in disbelief.

“Only Council members are supposed to have access…” Wesley broke off as he realized he might be revealing more classified information. Oh dear Lord, there was only one way this could have happened, and that was yet another dereliction of his duty. In a humiliated whisper he managed: “Do I talk in my sleep?”

“Look, Wes…” As the man made to touch him again, Wesley jerked back against the chest of drawers, wincing as it bruised his back.

The man flinched and hastily moved back. “Hey, it’s okay, I promise.” 

Wesley really tried not to look at the man’s…genitalia, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. It was…right there, and semi-erect and… _Oh god, oh god, oh god, please make there be some way my father never has to find out…._

The stranger seemed to notice Wesley’s rabbit-hypnotized-by-a-stoat gaze and quickly backed up further. “Let me…” He grabbed a pair of tracksuit bottoms from the chair and pulled them on, before saying: “Are you cold? Do you want your robe?”

“Robe?” Wesley echoed faintly. That suggested more than a one-night stand. That suggested they were – God help him – sharing this bedroom for the weekend at least. “Did I – Did I hit my head…?”

The man held out a blue dressing gown to him which was not the one he had packed; definitely not the same one at all. “I don’t think so. Not hit it. But you did pass out. Willow said it was just a deeper than usual sleep. The good news is the bomb is gone.”

“Bomb?” he stared at him aghast. Dear God, he’d gone to sleep a respectable watcher and woken up a gay terrorist. 

“Willow got rid of it.” The man offered him a hand. “Do you want some breakfast? You know Buffy is just dying to…”

“Buffy?” Finally something that made sense! “Buffy Summers?”

The man frowned. “Yes. Buffy. Why are you saying it like that?”

“You know her?”

Total disbelief on the stranger’s face. “Wes, you know I…” Then his expression changed completely. “No, you don’t, do you? You don’t know a damned thing.”

That stung. “I assure you, I have studied extensively for this post and I think you’ll find there is considerably more emphasis on field work these days than…”

The stranger fell back and Wesley noticed how pale he was. Not had just gone. Always apparently was. He crossed to the door and opened it, calling: “Giles! Willow! Buffy!” Great, now two of them were panicking. But, had he just said…?

“Giles?” Wesley echoed in dawning horror. “Rupert Giles? Is here? Where…we are? No, you don’t understand. You can’t tell him about… The Council mustn’t…” He hastily pulled on the dressing gown the stranger had given him, as if that would somehow help him.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” A girl’s voice, and there was its owner; a young redhead in pyjamas with bed hair and a pale, pretty face. Oh wonderful, now there were strange women looking at him as well as strange men. Wesley hastily belted his dressing gown.

“He doesn’t remember me.” The stranger sounded positively tragic.

“What…? Are you sure?” Another man. English. Which would make him…

“Giles, he doesn’t know who I am!” 

Wesley closed his eyes tightly. No other way to escape from this situation except the tried and tested – had never worked in the past but perhaps it would work now – method of closing his eyes so no one else could see him. Rupert Giles. The man he was replacing. The man he had hoped to impress with his efficiency and authority was seeing him for the first time as a half-naked, shivering thing, cringing in a corner after a night of drunken passion with a strange man. The only way for this situation to be improved would be for his father and Quentin Travers to walk in with half the Council in tow. No, he couldn’t even make jokes about that in the privacy of his own head. He started to shake and couldn’t seem to stop.

“Dear Lord… Wesley…?”

He opened his eyes. Impossible not to when there was an authoritative-sounding older Englishman crouched in front of him telling him to do so. The eyes gazing at him were kind behind their glasses, but that didn’t make the situation an iota less confusing and humiliating.

“Is Angel right? Have you forgotten us?”

“Angel?” he echoed in disbelief. “You mean that’s…” He stared up in fascinated horror at the stranger who was wringing his hands by the doorway. Of course, now he saw him in the light from the corridor he realized that the man in whose bed he had awoken was familiar; that, despite the different hairstyle, he was unmistakably… He could hardly bring himself to even whisper the word: “ _Angelus…_?”

The stranger flinched and turned to the redhead in desperation. “He doesn’t remember me!”

“I assure you I remember you perfectly.” Wesley clutched his dressing gown to himself and rose to his feet. “And what havoc you wreaked across Europe for more than a century. Young lady, I advise you to move away from that creature this instant.” He turned to Giles in disbelief. “Why haven’t you informed the Council that Angelus is in Sunnydale?”

“Because he’s not. He’s in L.A.” 

Wesley turned to see a young blonde woman step into the room.

“And he isn’t Angelus, he’s Angel.” She gazed at him intently. “You don’t know who I am, do you? I’m Buffy Summers.”

He looked at Giles in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why are you allowing a dangerous animal like Angelus to roam loose and why am I…?” That was when it hit him. He hadn’t spent the night in the bed of a strange man at all; he’d spent the night in the bed of a _vampire_. A blow to the solar plexus could not more efficiently have knocked the wind from his body.

“Easy…” Giles gripped him by the shoulders, looped an arm around his neck and steered him back to the bed. 

At the sight of the crumpled sheets, Wesley gave a strangled yelp. “No!”

“You need to sit down.” Buffy took his other arm and he was surprised by the strength of her grip. When she shoved him – not ungently – onto the bed, he really had no choice but to do as she said and sit. She looked at him and then turned to Rupert Giles. “Giles – explain.”

As Angelus came forward, Wesley automatically flinched and the vampire stopped, a look of distress on his face. Gently, he said, “Wes, I know if you just woke up and don’t remember anything this must seem a little bizarre to you….”

“Understatement of the century there, I think,” Buffy told him.

“What do you remember?” Giles pressed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Wesley snatched a much needed breath, trying to tell himself that having a Slayer between him and Angelus meant he was safe. It was really bothering him that the redheaded girl was still within reach of that monster though. “I remember – the plane journey and hiring a driver to take me into Sunnydale and… I must have fallen asleep during the drive.”

“Oh no…” said the redhead faintly. “I’ve tabula rasa’d him.”

“No, you haven’t,” Giles assured her. “It’s probably just a temporary side effect from the spell and will wear off very soon.”

“What if it doesn’t?” she said desperately.

“Wes, you have to trust me on this.” There was an ache in the vampire’s voice that almost made Wesley believe him until he realized it was probably just a ploy of his kind. “We’re friends, you and I. The best of friends.”

Wesley looked at him narrowly. “You may have these people fooled but I know exactly what you are and there is no way on earth that I would ever be friends with…”

Buffy marched to the chest of drawers, picked up a photograph and then shoved it under Wesley’s nose. “Think again.”

“Gently, Buffy,” Giles said in mild reproach. “He just woke up naked in bed with a vampire. You must expect a little disorientation.”

Wesley gazed in disbelief at the picture of him and Angelus and a pretty dark haired woman with a dazzling smile. “But… That is to say, I don’t… Why would I…?”

“Angel has a soul,” Buffy told him. “He’s a champion for good. He fights evil. You fight it with him. You, Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Illyria and Spike.”

“Spike?” He looked up at her in horror. “As in William the Bloody?”

Buffy and Giles exchanged a glance. Buffy grimaced. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned Spike yet?”

“That might have been a good idea,” said Giles dryly.

“You’re saying I fight evil alongside the most evil vampire to ever walk the earth and the second most evil vampire to ever walk the earth?”

“I don’t think I was that bad,” Angelus said a little sulkily. “The Master was worse.”

“They both have souls,” Giles explained.

“Oh, I see. Both of them, you say? Was there a special on at Wal-Mart? Buy one vampire soul, get another free?”

“Wasn’t free.” Another voice he didn’t recognize. “I worked bloody hard for that soul.”

Wesley took one look at the peroxide demon in the doorway and got to his feet. “All right, this insanity has gone on long enough. I refuse to accept that I have so abdicated from my responsibilities that I choose to work alongside the vampire who attempted to murder my own father and…”

“Given what your father’s like, I would have thought that was a selling point.” There was the flare of a lighter before the peroxide vampire looked across at him. “And I wasn’t trying to kill him particularly. I was just trying to eat a few orphans. And it’s not as if I succeeded on either account.”

“Stop confusing him,” Angelus hissed at Spike.

Spike rolled his eyes. “I think confusion is a little on the inevitable side, mate. He thinks he’s here to play Wesley the Watcher and he wakes up in bed with a vampire. If you hadn’t been so weird and kinky about having to snuggle up with him every night at least he wouldn’t be sitting there thinking he’s turned gayboy as well as minion of evil.”

“I’m not a minion of evil!” Wesley looked up at Giles for guidance. “Am I?”

“No. Wesley, I know it’s a lot to take in, but you do have to trust me where Angel and…Spike are concerned. Angel was cursed by gypsies and his soul restored in revenge for a member of their clan that he killed. The reason why there are no Council records of him for a century after his last known place of slaughter is because he was haunted by remorse and lived…”

“…in the sewers, eating rats,” Spike supplied helpfully. “And if you’re thinking that makes him a big fat loser, you’d be right.”

“…lived apart from humanity.” Giles glared at Spike. “So he wouldn’t be tempted to feed upon them.”

“Which I didn’t,” Angelus put in hastily. “Feed on them, I mean.”

Buffy nodded. “Angel’s good. He’s a people’s champion sort of vampire now. He helps the helpless.”

Wesley wondered if he was still dreaming. That would make everything so much more explicable. “Angelus and William the Bloody are now defenders of humanity?”

“I prefer ‘Spike’,” the vampire explained. “It’s shorter.”

“Yeah, and he can actually spell it.” Angelus moved forward and Wesley instinctively pressed back. The vampire looked downcast. “Look, Wes, I know this is difficult for you to take in, but we really are friends, I swear. And we were only sharing a bed because we just came back from a hell dimension and you get nightmares.”

“Oh, that I believe,” said Wesley faintly. “I appear to be having one now.”

“I’m so sorry,” said the redhead desperately. “I don’t know how I… There was a tiny instant when the spell seemed to…hitch, but it was just for a moment, less than the blink of an eye really. I was using Wesley’s power to make the bomb return to an earlier state of being and I think I must have… He must have been affected by it, just for that millisecond.”

“But he hasn’t returned to an earlier state of being, Will,” Buffy pointed out. “He still looks the same as when Angel carried him up here in that Hammer Horror damsel in distress kind of way. He just can’t remember the past five years.”

“The past, what…?” Wesley breathed in horror.

Buffy looked at Giles apologetically. “Probably another of those bits of information I should have saved until later, huh?”

“That might have been a good idea.”

Wesley sank back down on the bed, noticing that the room now appeared to be spinning.

“Wesley…?” said Buffy anxiously. “You don’t look so good… Giles, do you think he’s…?”

“Passing out…? Yes, I’d say that was a pretty good…”

 

Wesley woke up to find Angelus, the scourge of Europe, anxiously patting his cheek. “Wes…? Wes…?”

“No one calls me ‘Wes’…” Wesley muttered.

“I do.” The hurt in those brown eyes was so convincing he even felt a pang of guilt. Angelus was scarily close to him. They moved so fast, vampires. He remembered being shown that in a controlled experiment; just how swiftly they could grab the unsuspecting; and how strong they were. He wished Angelus would move away from him but it was probably a bad idea to show fear, even though he was certainly feeling it.

He winced at the thumping in his head and looked around the room. There were now even more people in it. Okay, this was definitely a nightmare. Otherwise, why would there be a green-skinned, red-horned demon in a silk dressing gown sipping from a cocktail glass and gazing at him anxiously, and a blue-haired woman with unblinking pale blue eyes, also gazing at him anxiously, and a very tall black American peering at him in concern and saying: “Hey, English? Do you remember me?”

“No, he doesn’t remember you,” Angelus said, a little petulantly. “He doesn’t remember anyone.”

“Maybe he’s just blocking you out on account of you being a bloodsucker.”

“The last thing he remembers is being driven into Sunnydale. Unless you were working as a cab driver back then, he won’t remember you.”

Wesley blinked and looked up at the various pairs of eyes all gazing at him. Giles, Buffy and the redheaded girl were also still hovering and there was now another presumably human male staring at him, too, out of the one eye that wasn’t covered by a piratical patch. “I don’t remember any of you,” he croaked. _And I’m not at all sure that I want to._

“Wesley…” There was authoritative voice that automatically made him want to sit up straighter. Rupert Giles. The man he was supposed to be replacing. Except…

“Drink this.”

He found a cup of tea placed in his hand and looked at it in confusion.

William the Bloody rolled his eyes. “Don’t you think the poor bastard needs something a bit stronger? Christ, if I ever woke up in bed with broodypants there, I’d need a bottle of Glengoyne at least. What am I saying? For that it would have to be Mortlach.”

“I think he would be more comfortable with tea, thank you, Spike.”

“Thank you.” Wesley sipped it automatically and felt a little soothed. “I don’t drink whisky.”

He became aware of everyone exchanging meaningful glances and sighing. “What?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” the redheaded girl hastened to assure him. “It’s just that you’re…different. It takes some getting used to.”

Wesley looked at Giles in horror. “I’m not a dipsomaniac, am I?”

“No, of course not,” Giles said a little too heartily.

“Just nuts,” muttered William the – Actually, Wesley thought, it was no wonder people had decided to call him Spike. Perhaps he would do the same from now on.

Angelus elbowed the other vampire hard. “Shut up.”

“What?” Wesley looked back to Giles for help. “Did he say…?”

“He’s a moron,” Angelus told him forcefully. “Don’t listen to him.” There was that look again, all anxious and pleading with him. 

Wesley hastily averted his eyes. Perhaps that was how Angelus had become the scourge of Europe, through lulling people into a false sense of security with the puppy dog eyes and acting as if he really cared about you. 

“Look, we can’t just hover over him all day, like this,” Giles said. “Why don’t we leave Wesley to have a shower and get dressed, and then he can come downstairs and have some breakfast and we can discuss the matter calmly and rationally.”

“Glad you suggested that, Giles,” Spike observed. “Because I was planning to stand on a chair and scream.”

“There’s no need to get snippy,” Wesley told the vampire and then as it advanced towards him, leant back on the bed, heart hammering as he realized he’d just stupidly provoked a dangerous killer.

Spike rolled his eyes. “Wes, I’m not going to…” He sighed. “I do actually _like_ you, you pillock. You don’t think I’d have signed up for that whole hand holding and mumbo jumbo malarkey for anyone, do you?”

“He doesn’t remember, remember?” Angelus told him tersely.

“Oh yeah.” Spike put a cigarette in his mouth while still gazing at Wesley curiously. “I forgot.”

“We all like you.” That was the young man with the eye patch who hadn’t spoken to him directly until then. “You may want to remember that. However – freaky things are, you are among friends.”

Wesley looked around at them again, trying not to goggle too obviously at the green-skinned demon and blue-haired woman, and the two notoriously evil vampires.

Buffy grimaced. “Not saying your taste in friends isn’t a little…out there, Wes, but you really are among them. Honest.”

Then they were gone and he was left alone with his cooling cup of tea and the memory of Angelus, the most evil vampire in the world, giving him that wistful look of anxiety as he reluctantly closed the door. Shouldn’t an evil vampire look a little more…evil than that? Not to mention slightly less…dorky?

Wesley drank his tea automatically. It was currently the only thing in front of him that wasn’t complicated and that he understood. Five years. He had lost five years of his life. He couldn’t accept that. It simply made no sense. But then most of the things they had said to him had made no sense. That could be, of course, because he’d lost a huge chunk of his memory, say – five years worth – as a side-effect of some clearly dangerous magic that redheaded child had been dabbling in. _Don’t end a sentence in a preposition, Wesley!_ He flinched instinctively and tried to gather up his scattered thoughts. Unfortunately they kept wanting to return, like a compass needle to magnetic north, to the thought of his father. He shied away from that at once. 

Or – if he wanted to face it head on – he had either won so little respect from his Slayer on his first appearance that she had decided to make him the victim of a humiliating and ridiculously complicated practical joke. Or he had been told the truth, in which case sometime over the past five years he had apparently departed so far from his hereditary calling that he now slept with the enemy and fraternized with demons. Either way, he had utterly failed in what he had set out to do: become a Watcher worthy of his surname, and win his father’s respect.

Right, that wasn’t helping at all. He took another sip of tea and decided to approach the problem logically. He should examine the practical joke theory first. Buffy Summers was a teenage girl and they were notoriously…frivolous creatures, well, by reputation they were anyway. The Academy’s habit of keeping its students segregated from anything that might be construed as a distraction certainly was useful when it came to concentrating on one’s studies but was not perhaps so efficient in giving its Watchers an all round knowledge of… That thought process seemed likely to lead straight back to his waking up naked in a vampire’s bed with no idea how he’d got there. The point was that he didn’t know what teenage girls were like. For all his life the Slayer being a young girl had just been an interesting anomaly which had led to some controversial papers being written on the correlation between the possibly demonic power source of the Slayer and the claim by clerics of the Middle Ages that female of the species was not possessed of a soul. There was never really anything written that told of…nail varnish and earrings and make up. 

If he had thought about it at all, he had always assumed that Slayers…slew. He was aware that they had to do other things in between staking vampires but he had thought of those being along the lines of: training to Slay, sleeping to gather strength for Slaying, eating to gather strength for Slaying, studying the Slayer’s Handbook and so on; a mirror image of the life of the Watcher-in-training, all preparation and research and weapons training. But Buffy had certainly not looked like a young woman who spent every waking hour, not in the gym or the cemetery, working on her demon and weapons identification. She looked like a woman who liked pink lipstick and eye shadow and cared about clothes and shoes and giggling inanely in the manner of those young women he had sometimes passed on the way back to his lodgings who had appeared to speak a language and live a life so far removed from his own that they might as well have been inhabiting a parallel dimension. Those sort of girls had always made fun of him; of his accent, of his lack of interest – if he tried not to gawp at them in too much the manner of a man encountering exotic wildlife from a newly discovered continent – or his over interest if he couldn’t help looking at them wistfully and wondering just exactly how one _did_ go about striking up a conversation with these incomprehensible creatures. So, he could hardly dismiss out of hand the possibility of her having been instrumental in some deception designed to make him look foolish, and perhaps to discredit him with the Council so she could keep her preferred Watcher.

But there were the _practicalities_ of such a deception. It wasn’t as if a Slayer and even one vampire should be on nodding terms, let alone joining forces with two of them to make fun of her new Watcher. And, wouldn’t it have made more sense to come up with a scenario less unbelievable than this one? Not just one, but two, reformed vampires? Green-skinned demons? Blue-haired women? And it was difficult to believe that Rupert Giles would be party to such a deception. He probably had his reasons to feel bitter towards the Council, but if a joke had been carried out, it had involved drugging Wesley, removing his clothing, leaving him in bed with a serial killer, and, last but by no means least, looking another Englishman in the eye and lying to him. He didn’t believe Rupert Giles was capable of that last act. The man was a Watcher. A scholar. A librarian. According to the Council he had failed in his duties because he had allowed himself to become too emotionally attached to his charge. That suggested he had a compassionate nature, if nothing else, and Wesley had no reason to doubt that he had an honourable one as well.

That left the lost five years possibility. Appalling and unbelievable as it was, he found it slightly less appalling and unbelievable than the alternative that a trained Watcher had been party to a spiteful practical joke against a fellow graduate of the Watchers’ Academy. He finished his tea and got to his feet. He felt dazed, but that was helping a little; it was as if he was slightly separated from his body and his surroundings. No doubt it was simply shock, but, like a swelling around a broken ankle, it left him capable of moving when he would otherwise have had no choice but to stay still and whimper.

There should be evidence of those lost years, right? He looked at the photograph again. He looked in it pretty much the way he thought of himself looking; except for the appearing happy part. As if he belonged with these people. As if he knew they wanted him there. That beautiful girl with the dazzling smile and the man whose naked body he had woken up beside less than an hour before. The vampire he had been trained to help destroy, for whose sake he had apparently severed himself from the Council and presumably his family. There was no way that his father would ever have been anything other than appalled by such a decision. And rightly so, it had obviously been an appalling decision for any Watcher to make. A rejection of his calling, his training, his peers. Yet, he looked so happy in the picture. He didn’t remember seeing a photograph of himself where he looked truly happy before. Of course he must have done. Laughed at jokes and films and plays. Smiled when he got the highest marks again. There was just something different about this expression. He touched his face tentatively, as if it might have left some kind of evidence it had once been there. The stubble was a surprise. Perhaps looking at himself in a mirror might be a good idea? That would surely tell him if he was older than when he had set out from England more effectively than any attempt to play Hercule Poirot?

He walked into the bathroom and there was a razor, soap, towels, a shower. And a mirror. Why would a vampire need a mirror in his bathroom? _Because mirrors in bathrooms are standard fittings and he’s so used to not having a reflection that he doesn’t even notice it any more_ …. Wesley took a deep breath, positioned himself in front of the sink and gazed at –

A stranger. This wasn’t him. No. This was…the ghost of Christmas Future. He put a hand to his face and leant closer to examine it more closely. What scared him the most was how minor the changes were. Different hair, the unshaven jaw… Yet, he was undoubtedly a stranger to himself. Odd to see himself clearly when his reflection wasn’t wearing glasses. He must have had laser surgery. It was him, after all, but…not the same man who had left for Sunnydale, no. Definitely not him. The eyes were more or less the same, but the shadows under them were pretty spectacular. The cheekbones looked higher, with those hollows beneath them that he didn’t recognize. The planes were the same though, underneath the surface changes. He ran his fingers down the side of his face, remembering how long it had taken him to need to shave. He’d used to sit there willing the bristles to grow as proof that he was truly becoming an adult. Odd to think of that now. Shaving had quickly become a bore… He wasn’t the same Wesley any more. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them quickly as if he could surprise his reflection – his true reflection – into putting in an appearance. But there was no one there looking back at him with glasses and carefully parted hair, wearing that suit with the shoulder pads and the blue tie with the tiny white polka dots, which had always been a favourite. Someone clean and neat and untouched by life; the incipient panic hidden behind the comfort of those disguising lenses. This was someone else.

He was an emaciated ruin and yet he had an unsettling, unfamiliar kind of…beauty. He didn’t know another word for what he had become. He looked for himself and there he was, in places, half-hidden, the same bones he thought he remembered but everything was altered by the surface changes, the thinness and the stubble and the shadowed eyes and that strange weariness but also as if something disguising had been burnt away to reveal the essence beneath. Even though he was the hollow shadow of a man, he looked at himself and was reminded of that quote from DeLillo: _Such men have the glamour of a wrecked Ferrari_. He looked like the kind of man who had used to get the attention of those giggling girls who had never looked at him. He found himself abruptly appalled by and jealous of what he had become.

His life had clearly been _terrible_ and yet there was something in his reflection that held him half-mesmerised because he had never known he had it in him to look like this. Was this who he was now or had he simply learned the art of disguise so well that he could pass for something he wasn’t? Either way this was not who he had been when he stepped onto that plane.

Aloud he said only: “Not a practical joke then.”

***

It was justice, of course. Angel couldn’t deny that. He knew they were all thinking it even though no one was tactless enough to say it. But then no one was saying anything much. A strange melancholy had fallen over everyone. They’d saved Wesley and lost him in the same instant. Now they sat around despondently, in the lobby mostly, although Willow and Giles were murmuring quietly to one another from the office as they turned the pages of their spell books. Spike was chain smoking pensively and taking occasional swigs from the bottle by his feet. Buffy sitting at the foot of the stairs, Illyria standing listening; Lorne, ironically, sitting on the seat in the lobby to which they’d duct-taped him on the last occasion that a precious part of their memories had been lost. Gunn – cheerleader for the group who had wanted to decapitate Lorne during those crowded and confusing few hours – sat next to him, polishing his axe. Presumably he found that action as comforting as did Lorne the sipping of his ever-present cocktail. Xander was drinking beer next to Gunn. He looked unusually grim, the eyepatch a reminder to anyone who might have been unwise enough to forget, that this was a man who had looked into the face of death more than once.

Wesley didn’t remember him. Didn’t know who he was. Who any of them were. Looked at him and saw only a vampire with a terrible reputation for carnage. Wesley was afraid of him. Yesterday he had been the one Wesley called for; the one he needed to fight off the nightmares. Now, to a Watcher, he probably _was_ the nightmare. He closed his eyes and remembered demonstrating his strength to the person Wesley now thought he was.

_Because this is how fast I could take you if I wanted to…. ___

__Christ, he’d been a macho prick in those days; resentful because the fragile human dared to be scared. No, resentful because the uppity human dared to challenge him with a cross. But that had just been the outward sign of Wesley’s very understandable fear. He hadn’t even allowed him that._ _

__Wesley gazing up at him with all that hope and excitement:_ _

___“…it’s saying – that you get to live until you die. It’s saying – it’s saying you become human.”_ _ _

__All those moments of shared triumph and despair; sitting either side of Cordelia’s hospital bed, willing her back to sanity. Those fleeting good times and those oh so bad times. The pillow in the hospital. The taste of Wesley’s blood in his mouth. Him bawling out Wesley while the guy looked at him in bewilderment because he didn’t know what he’d done, only that if it had made Angel this pissed with him it must clearly have been something very wrong. Not getting that sometimes Angel was just an unreasonable bastard or that the thing that had flicked his erstwhile leader on the raw was a memory Wesley no longer shared._ _

__And there it was, of course. The part that served him right. He’d high-handedly stolen all their memories to safeguard Connor. How had he justified it to himself? They were better off without them. They didn’t need to remember all that crap. Wes didn’t need to carry the burden of that guilt any longer. _Daddy knows best….__ _

__And now his ass was well and truly bitten. This time he hadn’t been able to stipulate which memories were taken and which were left and he hadn’t been one of the memories that stuck. None of them had. A new beginning with a vengeance; except it hadn’t even been his just punishment handed out by a higher power, just an accidental result of Willow’s mystical lateral thinking._ _

__“It could be temporary, right?” Gunn looked up. “Wes not remembering us?”_ _

__“Could be.” Angel looked at the floor of the lobby. It needed sweeping. Cordelia had always been the one who made sure the place stayed clean. Not that she did it all herself, but she put her foot down about chores like the Soccer Mom from Hell somedays. Cordelia. Wesley didn’t even know who she was. Or Fred. He looked across at Illyria… Illyria – he’d looked right at her and he hadn’t flinched. Not even healing tissue; just no memory of that wound at all. She was just this strange blue-haired creature who didn’t blink. If he came down and didn’t escape out of a window to get away from the freak show, they would introduce him to her and he wouldn’t feel a single pang. That was strange to think about._ _

__He’d stolen so many memories in his time. Buffy, so she wouldn’t remember their perfect day of him being human. Connor, so he could have a new life. Wesley, so he wouldn’t remember the reason why Connor needed a new life or that he had even existed. One signature and it was gone, all of it, the pain, the pillow, the agonizing over that terrible decision that had cost them both so much, the rejection, the bleak time in the wilderness. Had he stolen some of Lorne’s ability to read people? He wasn’t sure about that. Even now. Not completely familiar with all the ins and outs of his betrayal of the people around him, the full extent of his crime. Had Fred died because of something he had done? He knew she had died because of something he had failed to do. He and Spike had stood there on that damned bridge over the abyss and waited it out, let the time trickle past them as the dead god kings of the old world disappeared into dots in the infinity. Would Gunn have taken the upgrade anyway? He didn’t know the timing precisely; not the moment when they’d made the fatal decision to sign up for the Wolfram & Hart Fast Track to Corruption and Certain Misery Course. Had Wesley killed his father because his mental nuts and bolts had been loosened in the mindwipe? Angel had spent a century trying to look into the full horror of his past crimes, shouldn’t that give a guy a head start on not committing any new ones? Why hadn’t he proven better at keeping his people safe? Why had Doyle and Cordelia and Fred had to die? That was why he’d had to dive into that hell dimension after Wesley. He couldn’t fail another fragile human who had pledged his life to Angel’s cause. _ _

__Maybe it was better this way. Wesley had forgotten both of their failures. He could walk out of this hotel right now and know nothing of stealing Connor or stabbing Gunn or feeling Fred die in his arms._ _

__“Red will get him back.” Spike tossed another cigarette butt onto the floor. A century and a half walking the earth and the guy couldn’t use an ashtray? “This is small stuff to her.”_ _

__“Damned straight.” Xander sipped his beer as if he didn’t much care for the taste of it._ _

__Gunn abruptly got to his feet. “Maybe we should see how she’s doing.”_ _

__“Sounds like a plan.” Lorne turned to Illyria and Buffy. “Going to join us for the inevitable angsty pow-wow, SuperWomen?”_ _

__“Couldn’t we just take it as a said?” Spike shrugged wearily, but he was getting to his feet all the same._ _

__“What?” Xander enquired._ _

__“The ‘do-we don’t-we, maybe we should, maybe shouldn’t, new start over free will over how much free will does anyone have when their memories have already been pissed about with once anyway?’ arguments.”_ _

__Buffy frowned. “Is that an issue?”_ _

__“Everything’s an issue,” said Gunn heavily._ _

__Lorne nodded. “It’s kind of inevitable when you sign up to work for a guy who is atoning for a dozen lifetimes of sin. Comes with the perpetual blackout and no crucifixes in the office deal.”_ _

__Spike shrugged. “All the moral ins and outs to agonize over, love. I suggest you get yourself a drink.”_ _

__“I’ve been thinking…” Angel began tentatively._ _

__Spike groaned. “Better make it a large one.”_ _

__***_ _

__Wesley came down the stairs in his socks, carrying the shoes which he presumed were his; narrow fitting, Italian leather. His clothes were an odd mixture. He and Angelus appeared to be sharing a wardrobe and there had been a clear gap of several inches in the middle between the one set of clothes and the others. Angelus wore a lot of black. Occasionally purple. Mostly black. Wesley – the Wesley he couldn’t remember being – seemed to vacillate between blue, grey, or green sweaters of no particular style, or what appeared to be designer shirts, mostly in plain colours: moss green, mauve, dark blue, silver grey. There was a tuxedo, oddly enough, but none of the suits that Wesley had liked to wear in the past. The motorcycle leathers had also given him pause. He’d assumed at first they must belong to Angelus, but they had been very emphatically in what seemed to be the ‘Wesley’ side of the wardrobe. They were rather cool. He’d opted for wearing the clothes on the chair in the end. It seemed the least confrontational; the most inclined to show that he was willing to meet them halfway, believed them even. Here he was at least trying to show a link between himself and the Wesley they wanted him to be. The Wesley who apparently wore jeans, white t-shirts, and this rather raggedy looking green sweater. Better that than the pyjamas and dressing gown combination anyway. He didn’t want to look like Arthur Dent._ _

__He moved as quietly as he could, not sure how to deal with them en masse, these strangers who claimed to know him, and was simultaneously relieved and disconcerted to find that he apparently wasn’t going to have to as none of them were in sight._ _

__In hearing however…_ _

__He caught his breath as he heard them, and immediately sat down on the third step from the bottom so as to be less visible, automatically putting on his shoes as he listened to them:_ _

__“…chance to start over again…” That was Angelus. He sounded earnest and defeated at once. Passionate and yet…depressed._ _

__“Man, I can’t believe we’re going through this again…”_ _

__“Gunn, I told you, it’s not the same situation.”_ _

__“It’s _exactly_ the same situation. You’re talking about taking away from Wes who he is.”_ _

__“No, I’m talking about letting him stay who he is. Who he is right now, instead of making him go back to being who he was.”_ _

__Wesley felt a chill go through him. Good grief, what kind of a person was he that these people who claimed to be his friends didn’t want him to be the man they knew?_ _

__“Who he was _is_ who he is – who he really is, anyway. Didn’t you learn anything from the mindwipe? We are what we are and part of that is what we remember. Supposing someone took all your memories away tomorrow and you didn’t remember you had anything to atone for, what would that make you?”_ _

__“Happier.” Angelus sounded sad to Wesley and he felt a little pang as he heard it – not liking to hear that note in his voice; even though this was a vampire he was listening to, and not even just any vampire, but a notoriously vicious, sadistic, and amoral vampire, and it was surely nothing to him if it was happy or sad. “We have a choice here. We can see this as a blessing or a curse.”_ _

__“I see it as a spell gone wrong myself.” Spike shrugged. “I’m with Chuck and his lawyer knowhow on this. You already tried fixing it so Wes didn’t have all the guilt and the angst and the whatever. All that meant was that he got hit all the harder when the memories came back again. You can’t change the past.”_ _

__“But you can.” Wesley thought how haunted Angelus sounded and how terribly…sad. “I did. With Connor. He’s happy now. I don’t think any of you realize what we’re going to give back to Wesley if we ask Willow to do this…”_ _

__“The truth.” The man called Gunn was stolidly determined. Standing against the wall with his arms folded as if no one could shift him without the use of heavy machinery. Wesley could see him through the window of the office. “Didn’t we learn at Wolfram & Hart that you have to stay true to yourself?”_ _

__“Look at the reality of what we’re giving back to him if we go through with this. He’ll remember that one of his closest friends is dead, that the woman he loved is dead, that he was tricked by a demon and a man bent on vengeance into stealing my son and causing him to be brought up in a hell dimension. That I tried to kill him for it. That we all turned on him. That none of his so-called friends ever gave him a chance to explain his side of things. We just shut him out. That he started sleeping with a woman he knew to be evil. That he kept a woman chained up in his closet. That when my soul was removed – at his insistence – I got out and drank from the corpse of the woman he’d been sleeping with for the previous six months, meaning he had to cut off her head. That she came back from the dead to offer him the keys to the kingdom of hell incorporated. That I, the noble champion whose cause he has spent the past five years of his life supporting, turned out to be willing to sell all of you down the river if I could save my son in the process. That Fred died in his arms. That Illyria wears her face now…”_ _

__Wesley found he was having trouble breathing as he listened to this catalogue of failures and disasters._ _

__“Did I miss anything out?” Angelus demanded._ _

__Giles said quietly: “Yes. Everything that matters.”_ _

__There was a pause before Angelus said defensively, “What’s that supposed to mean?”_ _

__“He found somewhere to belong, Angel. And he earned the love and trust of every one of you. Do you think someone like Wesley would really be stronger for not knowing that?”_ _

__“I can’t give all that crap back to him! All that misery and those mistakes and the times I…”_ _

__“Look, we made this mistake with Cordy, remember?” Gunn said intently. “Tried to give her a load of guff instead of coming out and telling the truth and I think we all remember how that turned out. Not saying Wes is going to run off and sleep with your hellspawn if we’re not straight with him but I think even if we can’t get his memories back we ought to tell him the truth about what’s been going on. That way, if the memories do come back he’s only going to be remembering stuff he already knew about. It’s not going to hit him like a Sherman tank.”_ _

__Angel shook his head. “Why do we have to tell him anything? I just want him to be happy. Why can’t you all just let him be happy? He can go home with Giles and be a Watcher. He’s a _good_ Watcher, he just never got the chance before. Faith would have him as her Watcher again. Then he’d be back on his right path. He could help her train those new Slayers. They’d listen to him. No one would… They wouldn’t know about the other…”_ _

__“We just got him back!” Gunn said and Wesley flinched at the passion in his voice; having to snatch a breath because it made no sense that this man he didn’t know should sound like this about him. That anyone should sound like this about him. “You’re asking Lorne and Illyria and Spike and me to give up our friend because you say so?”_ _

__“This is unacceptable to me.” That was Illyria._ _

__“Well, if you actually cared about him instead of just wanting to _fuck_ him, it might be a little more acceptable to you.”_ _

__“Is that aimed at me or Illyria because I’m still holding an axe…?”_ _

__“Kids, shall we back away from the yawning precipice of who has the purest motives here?” He had to risk lifting his head to take a look to see who that was talking and it was oddly enough the green-skinned demon. The horned creature took a strengthening sip from the glass in his hand before saying, “Let’s take it as read that everyone here loves Wesley and wants the best for him…”_ _

__Wesley felt his jaw drop, because how on earth could anyone just _say_ that, like that, so casually, as if of course that was how it was. That was _never_ how it was. It had never been that way. It never would be that way. What was that horned creature drinking to think it could possibly be that way? He felt shaken to the core of his foundations by that casually insane assertion. That upset him more than the catalogue of failures. That had at least been on some level expected, but this was just…wrong._ _

__“…and therefore let’s just take it as read that every suggestion someone makes is coming from a _good_ place for Wesley, okay? And when I say ‘take it as read’, remember I’m the one who did the reading and who you will therefore be insulting if you start casting nasturtiums.”_ _

__“She does want to fuck him….”_ _

__He’d never realized that scourges of Europe had it in them to mutter quite so petulantly. No one had ever mentioned anything about sulking and pouting when he’d been researching Angelus._ _

__“And shall we recap whose bed he’s been sleeping in for the past I don’t know how many months?”_ _

__“Didn’t have a bed on Askaroth.” Another petulant mutter. “We slept on the ground. And we weren’t sleeping together. We were just…sleeping. But together.”_ _

__“The fact that nothing…penetrative took place, Angel…”_ _

__“Okay, can we stop this conversation now?” That was Buffy; he recognized her voice. “If there’s going to be any talk of Angel and Wesley and penetration, I’m going to have to bail.”_ _

__“Me too.” The other human male._ _

__“And me three.” Gunn again._ _

__“Why is it so hard for everyone to grasp that I just want him to be happy?”_ _

__“Everyone does get that,” Spike countered. “We just also think you’re an asshole who can’t learn from his mistakes.”_ _

__“We can give Wesley back a life that isn’t fucked up. He can go back with Giles, and the Watchers’ Council will be damned grateful to have him back.”_ _

__“What if they’re the ones that sent the cyborgs?” Gunn countered. “Whoever they were, they were a force for good. Not too ethical, but they were killing the bad guys. They wanted to make you their puppet instead of the puppet of the Senior Partners. They treated Wesley like a traitor who didn’t matter. That robot pretending to be his father would have killed him if Wesley hadn’t shot him first…”_ _

__Wesley felt as if someone had punched him in the guts. The air just whooshed straight out of him and he doubled over, gasping for air. Shot him… Robot… Pretending to be his father…_ _

__From a long way off the voices spiralled back to him, slowly gaining ascendancy over the whooshing in his ears. “….another memory we’ll be giving back to him if we let Willow reverse the spell.”_ _

__“It’s his life, Angel. He’s entitled to it.” Gunn again._ _

__“It isn’t the way his life was meant to go.”_ _

__“You don’t know that.” Giles. He sounded so reasonable._ _

__“Lorne – Wesley is off his path, isn’t he?”_ _

__“Angel, thanks to you we’re all off our path. Our original path anyway. The Senior Partners saw to that when they brought back Darla and you helped them every step of the way by sleeping with her. Connor wasn’t meant to happen. And then he was. That’s the way these things go. You know that. A memory doesn’t exist and then it does. Buffy’s sister never was and then she had always been there. Connor’s like that. But as soon as you slept with Darla you set a chain of events in motion that was always going to lead to the Senior Partners unleashing the apocalypse. All I knew was that Wesley had a part to play in preventing it. And he did. So, perhaps none of us are off our path. Maybe sleeping with Darla wasn’t the moment when the Powers That Weren’t Jasmine washed their hands of you and maybe it was pre-destined. All I know is that he’s on the same path we are right now. He’s with us.”_ _

__“Being with us is what’s nearly gotten him killed half a dozen times already.” Angel spoke passionately. “You don’t want to hear it, I know. Do you think I like saying it? Do you think I like admitting that the worst thing that ever happened to Wesley was…me? I used to think I was helping him. That his life was better because of me. That because of me he had a purpose and a family and a job he was doing that no one else could do better. A sense of place in the world.”_ _

__“You were, Angel,” Lorne said. “You still are. You followed him into a hell dimension because you couldn’t bear to lose him. Don’t you think Wesley would like to remember that?”_ _

__“I’m a vampire. That’s all I am to him now. And maybe it’s better that way. Maybe Watchers aren’t meant to be friends with Vampires any more than Slayers are.” Angel sounded so sad that Wesley felt an irrational desire to go in there and tell him everything was okay. “Maybe I wasn’t just cursed with a soul by those gypsies, maybe I was cursed with the ability to make a living hell out of the lives of everyone I dare to love.” He looked across at Buffy. “We both know that my loving you was probably the worst thing that ever happened to you.”_ _

__“No. It wasn’t. Having to kill you was the worst thing.”_ _

__“I tried to kill him…”_ _

__“No, you didn’t.” Gunn again._ _

__“I put a pillow over his head and…”_ _

__“Yeah. You put a pillow over his head when he was hooked up to a machine with an alarm on it that told everyone in the vicinity he’d stopped breathing. How long does it take to snap a human neck, Angel? Come on, you’ve had enough practise. How long? Two seconds? One? If you’d wanted him dead he would have been dead. You weren’t trying to kill him, you were trying to make him suffer.”_ _

__“Do you think it’s going to be good for his mental health to have that memory back? What about the way you treated him? What about Fred? What about Cordy? It was bad enough after he broke the Orlon Window, but at least he only got some of the bad memories back. He already remembered Lilah. He remembered Cordy and what she’d done and how she was in a coma now. This time he doesn’t have any memories at all and you’re proposing that we just hit him with them all at once. Sunnydale. Faith. Connor. Cordy. Lilah. Fred. Killing his father. If we do that to him he’ll end up insane. He’ll end up…”_ _

__“Roaming the alleyways, eating rats?” Spike sounded surprisingly compassionate. “Angel, we’re not gypsy cursing him here. We wouldn’t be giving him his memories back as a punishment. We’d be giving them back to him because they’re his. And weren’t there any good times at all? You just emotionally abused him in between bouts of the world kicking him in the head for the past five years?”_ _

__“The good times make it worse. The good times are the things we have to protect him from.”_ _

__“Okay. Let’s keep this simple, shall we?”_ _

__“Well, you’re certainly the guy for that job, Xander.”_ _

__Angelus was a bit of a bitch, Wesley had to concede. As someone who could be a bit of a bitch himself, he understood the need for it sometimes. It just seemed an odd trait in someone so…powerful._ _

__“You’re all the great and noble champions, I know. And I’m the guy with the eye patch and no special skills. But I always thought lying was wrong. Oh yes, and that free will was important.”_ _

__“Free will is important.” That was Gunn. “It’s so damned important that we ended world peace to preserve it. Something it would have been nice if Angel here had thought about when he was screwing around with ours five minutes later.”_ _

__Spike said, “Well, you see, Gunn, Angel’s a superhero and the laws are different for them. They can do whatever the hell they like and it’s okay because only kryptonite can hurt them.”_ _

__“I will not practise any deception upon Wesley.” That was Illyria. “He told me that he needed his memories to be himself.”_ _

__“His memories nearly got him killed!”_ _

__“Doing the right thing nearly got him killed,” Lorne countered. “He didn’t jump into that hell dimension because he had a death wish, Angel. He did it because it was the only way to stop demon legions overrunning the earth. He is always going to do the right thing, whether it’s misguided or heroic and involves kidnapping your son or saving the whole world. That’s who he is. With his memories or without them that is always who he’s going to be. He can just make more informed decisions with them.”_ _

__“We don’t have the right to decide for him.” The one Angel had called ‘Xander’ again. “He isn’t your kid. Maybe you had the right to make that decision for Connor and maybe you didn’t. Maybe it turned out well and he forgives you. That isn’t relevant here. You don’t have the right to make Wesley’s decisions for him. You did it once and it was wrong. You do it again, it will still be wrong. As far as I’m concerned it will always be wrong.”_ _

__“I wish you would…”_ _

__“He’s here.”_ _

__Wesley felt a shiver of fear as Spike said that. Instinctive and unreasonable as none of them seemed to mean him any harm. It was just the thought of being scented. Being sensed by a prey animal that fed upon his kind. He hastily got to his feet and walked a few paces into the lobby. They spilled out of the office to meet him, awkward or smiling falsely, looking guilty and furtive._ _

__“Hello, Wesley.” That was Giles being a little over hearty. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”_ _

__“Can you introduce me to everyone first?” There was far too much to take in so he wasn’t going to try. His heart was hammering with the stress of it all; those overheard remarks that had knocked the breath from his body and left him scared to look at his own reflection for fear of what he might see. _Murderer. Kidnapper. Madman_. But there was also the passion to deal with; that ache in Angel’s voice. Angelus’s voice. Had he been calling him Angel in his mind for a while there? When had that happened?_ _

__“Charles Gunn.” The tall African-American held out a hand and Wesley took it a little tentatively. He looked like a guy who could administer a crushing handshake but Gunn only squeezed his hand gently, like Wesley was fragile and too easily bruised._ _

__“Xander Harris.” Another handshake, this one from the man with the eye patch._ _

__“I’m Lorne, sweetpea.”_ _

__Wesley shook the demon’s hand and then said inanely: “You’re a demon.”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__Wesley gazed at him intently. “ Karathmama...nyuhg family…?”_ _

__“Oh please.” Lorne rolled his eyes. “Crumpet, do I _look_ like I live on raw sewage?”_ _

__“He’s Pylean.” Gunn explained. “Heart in his ass deal. Lovely singing voice.”_ _

__“I’m anagogic,” Lorne added, after a withering look at Gunn._ _

__“Oh.” Suddenly some of the things he’d overheard made sense. “You can sense the way in which each soul is striving for its own perfection?”_ _

__“I prefer to think of it as someone’s true path, handsome, but, yes, that’s pretty much it. If they sing I can read them and try to set them on their way.”_ _

__The blue-haired woman almost elbowed Lorne out of the way to gaze intently into Wesley’s eyes. “I am Illyria, god-king of the fallen worlds.”_ _

__“Oh.” Wesley had to swallow the urge to laugh hysterically. “Not a local girl then?”_ _

__“I am one of the Old Ones. I existed before humans infected this world like germs.”_ _

__“And you and I we’re…friends?”_ _

__She continued to gaze at him, intent and unblinking. “You said that we were allies of a kind. I asked you to be my teacher. You have been instructing me in the ways of this world and your kind.”_ _

__“Watcher to a demon of immeasurable age and evil?” Wesley nodded. It seemed the appropriate thing to do. “I see.”_ _

__“I wear the form of a woman you once loved. That is why you agreed to assist me. But although I could take that form at all times, you do not allow me to do so. I still do not understand why.”_ _

__“Blue, we’ve been through this.” Spike took her elbow and moved her away. “And you’re giving him way too much information there. He’s still trying to get the names and faces sorted out.”_ _

__“But I wish him to remember me.”_ _

__“Well, he doesn’t.” Spike turned back to him. “You know who I am. But what Rupert the Librarian said about me having a soul is true. I’m on the side of the good guys now.”_ _

__“Ah, I see. So it only _looks_ as if I’ve joined forces with a group of vampires and demons?”_ _

__Gunn winced. “I’m human.”_ _

__“An do we all peacefully co-exist in this hotel?” Wesley looked up the staircase to the innumerable bedrooms._ _

__“We’re actually two different groups.” Buffy stepped forward a little awkwardly. “My people are from Sunnydale. Giles, you’ve met, and Willow, and Xander. We don’t live here. We don’t live in Sunnydale any more either on account of it being a big smoking crater but… The others are your people.”_ _

__“My people.” He looked at Angel who was gazing at him miserably, Spike who was lighting a cigarette, Lorne who raised his glass in a rueful grimace, Illyria, who stared at him unblinkingly, and Gunn, who gave him a somewhat sheepish smile. “Two vampires, an Old One, a demon from a different dimension, and an American.”_ _

__“I don’t think being an American is as bad as being a demon,” Gunn protested._ _

__“And why not?” Lorne demanded. “We weren’t the ones who drove out the Native Americans.”_ _

__“Your kind used humans as slaves.”_ _

__“Well, thank goodness that never happened here.”_ _

__Wesley sighed. “And we do…what exactly?”_ _

__“Help the helpless,” Angel said, shoulders slumped dejectedly._ _

__“Fight evil wherever it may lurk,” Spike said, slightly facetiously, Wesley suspected._ _

__“Kill vampires and demons,” Gunn added._ _

__“Except for the ones with whom we work presumably?” Wesley observed._ _

__There was a general feel of people shuffling their feet. “Pretty much,” Gunn admitted. “But part of what makes us better than people who just go around say, calling Lorne a green bitch, and suggesting we chop his head off just because, is that we differentiate between the good and bad demons. We’re…discriminating.”_ _

__“It was kind of your idea,” Angel said. “You’re the one who found Caritas and first met Lorne.”_ _

__“Oh.” Wesley gave Lorne a wan smile, stifling the instinctively facetious comment that rose to his lips. Being nervous and feeling at a loss always tended to make him behave snippily and he didn’t really think it was a good idea to start alienating these people out of the starting blocks._ _

__“Shall we have some breakfast?” Giles suggested in that somewhat forced headmaster-at-a-bad-school-play manner he seemed to be adopting for the duration. “Wesley must be hungry after…well, after everything.”_ _

__“I could make eggs.” Angel looked at him a little shyly. “You used to like my eggs.”_ _

__Wesley had no idea how to respond to this person, who set every instinct he possessed screaming ‘run!’ and yet who looked at him with that quiet yearning expression and who seemed to care so passionately about his happiness. He took refuge in basic politeness. “Thank you. That would be…very nice.”_ _

__Angel looked so relieved, beaming at him in a way that so was entirely…dork-like that Wesley found himself wondering if this could really be _the_ Angelus. Had there perhaps been another one who had only been the scourge of say…small furry rodents?_ _

__He followed Giles blindly through one big door along a corridor and into a dining room. There was a white cloth spread still and plates and cutlery put ready. Spike looked at Giles in surprise. “You…?”_ _

__“We may as well be civilized.”_ _

__Spike looked at Wesley. “I suppose we do have company.”_ _

__“Sit here, sweetpea.” Lorne pulled out a chair for him and Wesley automatically sat down. He suspected that his father would hate him permitting a horned demon – or indeed anyone else – calling him ‘sweetpea’ and that was enough to make him decide that he would not only permit it but would positively learn to like it._ _

__There was a general flutter of activity around him, and although he knew it was a deliberate ploy to make the extraordinary seem more normal, it did help – the orange juice in the glasses, the milk in the jug, the teapot, the toast rack. The cutlery and cruets were all subtly art deco and he examined one with interest. “Are they original?”_ _

__“I guess.” Gunn again. “Angel would probably know. Or…well, you’re the one who did the research originally, on the history of this place.”_ _

__“Why do you – we – live here?”_ _

__“It was abandoned after some paranoia demon took up residence here. Angel stayed here for a while in the fifties ‘til the residents tried to stretch his neck and he stomped off in a huff. You did the spell to make the demon, you know…”_ _

__“Manifest?”_ _

__“Yeah. Can’t remember its name now. Which is odd because I got a lot of demon info downloaded into my brain when I… I guess those particular demons don’t put anything in writing. They feed off human fears.”_ _

__“A Thesulac?” Wesley suggested._ _

__“Yeah, that’s the one. Lots of tentacles. Southern accent.”_ _

__Wesley blinked. “I think that as with human beings the accent would probably vary depending on its birthplace. I don’t think I’ve researched the spell for disposing of one of those. Did you take notes?”_ _

__Gunn looked at him as if he were a little insane. “No, but you did, all the time. Lots of them. In scarily neat handwriting.”_ _

__“Watcher training, Gunn,” Giles put in as he poured them both a cup of tea. “One is always told to record everything. Tea, anyone?” There was a muted ‘Yes, please’ from Willow. Everyone else nervously sipped orange juice, except for Lorne, who nervously sipped something alcoholic, Illyria who kept on with the head tilting and not blinking thing, and Spike who just smoked._ _

__“It can be of invaluable assistance to one’s replacement,” Wesley explained, sipping his tea._ _

__Gunn grimaced. “Watchers get replaced a lot, do they?”_ _

__“Well, killing her Watcher is an obvious way to disorientate a Slayer, especially if she has unwisely formed an emotional attachment to him or her. That’s why the Watchers’ Handbook makes such a point of insisting that a good Watcher remains emotionally detached.” He glanced across at Giles then, suddenly realizing that he’d been tactless. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”_ _

__“The Watchers’ Handbook is written by robots for robots,” Buffy said shortly. “How are you supposed to face death every day and not care about the people facing it with you?”_ _

__“Well, it’s a technique, you see, which is taught by…” Wesley abruptly remembered the ragged misery in Angel’s voice; the distressed expressions on their faces when they realized he didn’t know who they were. He dropped his gaze to his plate. “I suppose that may be one of those theories that doesn’t test quite as well in the field.”_ _

__“You got that right.” Gunn poured him some orange juice. “Are there waffles? Who’s doing the cooking anyway?”_ _

__“Angel and Xander.” Willow looked up. She was a very pretty girl, Wesley thought, with glorious hair, but he didn’t really understand how she could be the powerful witch they seemed to think. She looked about seventeen. She frowned. “Angel and Xander in a kitchen. Together. With lots of sharp implements. I’m not sure that’s a very good idea.”_ _

__“Could be worse,” Buffy pointed out. “Could be Spike and Xander.”_ _

__“All I care about is do they know how to make waffles?”_ _

__Xander’s return seemed to answer that question. As they all looked at him in accusation, he shrugged. “Me and Angel in a kitchen together? With lots of sharp implements? Why didn’t anyone point out what a bad idea that was?”_ _

__“I want waffles,” Gunn told him._ _

__“And I ordered you some as I walked out of the kitchen – that place along the block delivers. There are pancakes, there are waffles. There is maple syrup. There is everything but porridge.” He said ‘porridge’ in an English accent, Wesley noted._ _

__“No porridge?” Giles looked up. “That’s disappointing.”_ _

__“Don’t start,” Xander warned him. “Everyone knows you only pretend to like oatmeal to gross out the rest of us.”_ _

__“Where’s Angelcakes?” Lorne drained his glass and then looked at the last melting ice cube sorrowfully._ _

__“Still making eggs and toast while burning himself on the range. Who knows if Wesley even liked his eggs? Maybe he was just being polite?”_ _

__As everyone looked at him, Wesley faced his or her inquisitive gazes and felt awkward. “I don’t know. I don’t remember what Angel’s eggs…taste like.”_ _

__The delivery boy and Angel arrived at the same time; Angel hotfooting it up from the bowels of the hotel where the kitchen was evidently situated with a pan of eggs in one hand and plate of toast in the other. Wesley couldn’t help gaping at the sight of a vampire playing waiter, and chef apparently on his behalf._ _

__“You ordered in?” Angel demanded witheringly of Xander as the delivery boy followed him tentatively into the dining room._ _

__“Hey, it was cheap at half the price compared with sharing a kitchen with you.”_ _

__Angel turned to Wesley with what was evidently meant to be a reassuring smile. At least his teeth were normal when he was like this, although Wesley still felt poised on a nerve hair trigger where he kept expecting the demon’s face to change into some ridged browed sharp-fanged visage of horror before ripping out his throat. Angel seemed to sense that, sighing as he carefully ladled scrambled eggs onto Wesley’s plate and pushed the toast within easy reach._ _

__“Thank you,” Wesley managed. “It’s very kind of you to go to so much trouble.” The expression in the vampire’s eyes made him realize how inadequate those thanks were. However much this creature might insist he wanted Wesley to stay as he was now, uncontaminated by memories of the past five years, it was difficult to look into his brown eyes and not see what seemed to be an incalculable depth of pain at being forgotten._ _

__Wesley hastily buttered the toast and spread the eggs onto it, grateful that the arrival of the delivery boy meant there was a covering fire of pancakes being identified and muffins and waffles handed around so he wouldn’t be sitting there in silent state trying to eat without dribbling eggs down his chin while everyone watched him expectantly. He picked up his knife and fork, having to fight down this feeling of hysteria that kept threatening to overwhelm him. He had lost five years as carelessly as he had habitually lost his loose change down the back of the settee. Somewhere between setting off to be the best Watcher the Council had ever produced and waking up naked in the bed of a vampire he had thrown his hat into the ring with a bunch of demons and strangers; apparently scattering friends and sanity as he went. And now here he was eating scrambled eggs on toast as prepared for him by Angelus and having his teacup replenished by the colleague he had been sent to replace._ _

__Conversationally he said: “Would anyone mind telling me why I’m no longer working for the Council or apparently as a Watcher?”_ _

__There was an abrupt cessation of cutlery and passing of foodstuffs. Their awkwardness made him feel a little better. Perhaps it was the incipient hysteria, but he felt that distant feeling kick in again; the one that made him feel that this situation was so inherently absurd that it couldn’t have any real power to hurt him._ _

__Wesley cleared his throat. “I appreciate that I’ve probably made innumerable mistakes over the past five years that you may wish to keep from me, but if I have a say in this matter I would really prefer to be told the truth. So… The last thing I remember is setting out for Sunnydale with every intention of becoming Watcher to Buffy and Faith, and no intention whatsoever of becoming affiliated to a group of demon-killing…demons. Perhaps, someone would be kind enough to tell me what happened during my time in Sunnydale?”_ _

__He noticed that everyone was looking at Giles, who paled slightly and then cleared his throat. “Well, you arrived in Sunnydale at a difficult time…”_ _

__“Giles being fired by the Council,” Buffy put in. “Not a popular decision with me. And Faith…”_ _

__“Yes. Faith…”_ _

__There was a general feeling of faltering._ _

__“Did I get her injured?” Wesley enquired._ _

__“No!” Buffy said quickly. “Faith is fine…now. She just wasn’t while you were…”_ _

__“There was an accident,” Giles explained. “She stabbed a human by mistake. It sent her a little off the rails. She temporarily…allied herself with our enemy but she’s rehabilitated now. It did however make your life as a new Watcher somewhat more difficult than…”_ _

__“It was an impossible situation,” said Angel emphatically. “Buffy wasn’t willing to accept you as her Watcher, and Faith was having a long slow dangerous nervous breakdown.”_ _

__Wesley felt the familiar sense of inevitability overwhelm him. “I screwed up and the Council fired me?”_ _

__“That would be the short version,” Xander admitted._ _

__“It’s debateable if you ‘screwed up’ or not, Wesley,” Giles insisted. “As Angel said, Buffy wasn’t feeling at her most cooperative and…”_ _

__“So, it’s my fault?” Buffy demanded._ _

__“Well, technically, Wesley being fired by the Council was your fault,” Willow pointed out reasonably. “They only fired him because you resigned from the Council, and with Faith in a coma that meant there wasn’t anyone left to…Watch…”_ _

__Wesley closed his eyes. “So, let me get this straight – during my stay in Sunnydale I managed to mismanage one Slayer to the point that she defected to the other side and got herself so badly injured she ended up in a coma, and to alienate the other to the point that she rejected the Council’s authority?”_ _

__“It was a complicated situation,” Giles insisted. “You really had to…be there.”_ _

__“Faith tried to kill Angel. You tried to get the Council to help him but when they wouldn’t I resigned,” Buffy explained. “But you helped us against the Mayor even though the Council had fired you. You came through when it counted.”_ _

__A terrible suspicion began to surface. Wesley moistened his lips. “And I came to LA…why…exactly?”_ _

__“Well, Angel and I… You know, we had a thing. And there was the curse. And he lost his soul…and I had to kill him, and then he came back from hell, and we tried to you know – with the not touching…but it was hard…” Buffy darted a glance at Angel. “I mean it was difficult. And then he said he was leaving. So he went to LA. And Cordy’s father had been arrested for tax evasion – Cordy really liked you, by the way, you and her kind of had a thing, only it never really…it was like the beginning of a thing…a pre-thing – so she went to LA, too. And meanwhile the Council had done the firing thing and you didn’t want to go back to England so you went to LA and hooked up with Angel and Cordy, and then Faith woke up and she was kind of crazy. And she came after me for putting her in the coma and then she went after Angel, so _she_ went to LA. And she kidnapped you and did things to you to make Angel come after her and so he went after her to rescue you and there was a big fight and then… Well, I think there were probably heaving bosoms and pouty lips as well, but the point is she didn’t want to kill Angel, she wanted Angel to kill her because of all the self-hatred and the guilt and everything. And the Council, they wanted to capture Faith so they told you they’d reinstate you if you helped them, and you pretended you were helping them but you came to warn Angel and you helped hold them off while we tried to rescue Faith and there was a big fight and she gave herself up and it was very much of the good what you did, and she’s all rehabilitated now, but the Council didn’t like you so much after that. And that’s why you’re not a Watcher any more.” Buffy snatched a much needed breath and took refuge in her orange juice while Wesley thought over what she’d said. The more he thought about it, the more that dawning suspicion was looking like a reality._ _

__“So, I annoyed the Council by asking them to help Angelus…”_ _

__“It’s _Angel_ ,” Buffy said in obvious irritation. “Angelus is the demon inside him.”_ _

__“Surely that’s semantics?” Wesley said reasonably._ _

__“No,” Gunn assured him. “The difference is you eating eggs or Angelus eating you. Two completely different guys.”_ _

__“Plus, Angelus wears a lot more leather,” Lorne added helpfully._ _

__Wesley took a deep breath. “Fine. I annoyed the Council by asking them to help Angel. Abandoned my hereditary calling to follow him to LA instead of returning to England to await my next assignment. Gave up the opportunity to be reinstated to warn him and the murderous rogue Slayer he was assisting of the Council’s rather sensible plan to capture her before she could commit further crimes and unsurprisingly was told never to darken their doorstep again.”_ _

__Angel’s eyes widened. “No, Wes, it wasn’t like that. You didn’t follow me here. You followed a demon called Barney here. He was an empath demon.”_ _

__“Like Lorne?”_ _

__“No, he was a killer. Well, you weren’t actually following him. You were following the Kungai who was following Barney. You didn’t know Cordelia or I were in LA until you tracked Barney to his apartment and met up with me there.”_ _

__Spike gazed across the table at Wesley. “You were thinking you had a crush?”_ _

__Wesley tried not to blush but doubted that he succeeded. Still, he had no memory of those events and should feel no connection to the person he had been but didn’t remember being. Really, as far as he was concerned that idiot had hijacked his body for five years and he’d only just got it back. “Did I?”_ _

__“No!” Angel said at once and then grimaced. “Well…”_ _

__No one else said anything for a painfully long half a minute._ _

__“It wasn’t why you came to LA,” Angel repeated. “Not that there was one. A crush, I mean. But even if there had been, it would just have been a kind of hero-worshipping, father-substitute kind of… No, there was no crush.”_ _

__“Absolutely,” Gunn said quickly and unconvincingly._ _

__“Oh, good.” Wesley took another bite of scrambled eggs on toast; chewed, and swallowed. “I feel so much better now.” He decided that he definitely needed to cultivate a state of mind where he felt absolutely no responsibility of any kind for anything he had done that he didn’t remember. It would probably save on one or six nervous breakdowns. “You know, these really are excellent eggs.” He looked up and was taken aback by the way Angel was positively beaming at the praise. Vampires of legendary viciousness were surely never supposed to care quite that much what a skinny useless ex-Watcher thought of their culinary abilities. He felt another of those uncomfortable pangs._ _

__“You really like them?” Angel pressed. “You’re not just saying it?”_ _

__His resolution about disowning any previous versions of himself wavered under the begging look in those brown eyes. “Yes,” Wesley found himself saying gently. “I really like them. Very…tasty.”_ _

__“He also kills demons,” Spike put in._ _

__“And he’s clean around the house,” Buffy said brightly._ _

__“And he consumes the blood of butchered swine,” Illyria added._ _

__Willow murmured: “For humans, Illyria, that’s not really so much of the selling point.”_ _

__Illyria gazed at Willow. “I know.” Something that was almost a smile flickered across her face._ _

__Angel gave her a look of dislike and muttered something under his breath that could easily have been ‘Bitch’._ _

__“Angelcakes…” said Lorne in mild reproach._ _

__“Yeah,” said Gunn. “We’re just one big happy family here.”_ _

__

__The story continued – tales of oracles and Doyle and Faith and visions, and demons slain and scrolls translated, and, most surprising of all, the tale of Darla. Wesley remembered her very well from his studies at the Academy. She was as notorious as Angelus himself; the two of them inspiring the other to more and more inventive feats of evil. No one in the Council had believed that she could really be gone, even though her reputation had faded in the last century – once separated from Angelus she had been nothing like as dangerous. But the story Lorne told was more extraordinary than any of her previous feats._ _

__Lorne leant forward: “Angel dusted his sire, Darla, to save Her Buffyness. A few years later, Wolfram & Hart bring Darla back from hell as a human. Unfortunately she still had the same disease that was killing her four hundred years before and there wasn’t a cure. Angel underwent a trial to try to save her but it was a no go on account of her already having that first get out of hell free pass. Then one of the lawyers at Wolfram & Hart who’d fallen in love with her, brings in Drusilla – ”_ _

__“My sire,” Spike added helpfully. “Making Angel my granddaddy although for some reason he doesn’t like people to know.”_ _

__“Thank you, Pointless Interruptus.” Lorne glared at Spike. “I was talking.”_ _

__Angel sighed. “Drusilla turned Darla, made her a soulless undead thing again, damned her straight back to hell. I kind of saw…red. I knew I’d have to kill her. I didn’t want to but I would have done it if I could. Meanwhile Holland Manners orders up a massacre from Darla and Drusilla, and they gave him one – killed him and most of the lawyers in the room with him. I left them to it. Then I knew I was going to have to kill Darla and Dru and I didn’t want any witnesses. I fired you all. You and Gunn went off and did your…bonding.”_ _

__“Why are you saying it like that?” Gunn demanded._ _

__Angel shrugged. “No reason.”_ _

__“You better not be implying what I think you’re implying because lawyer upgrade or no lawyer upgrade I still know how to stake a damned vamp.”_ _

__“I’m just saying you bonded.”_ _

__“Yeah, we did.”_ _

__“You and Wes most of all.”_ _

__“Well, I was right there when he got shot, which was more than you were.”_ _

__“Oh, so you’re throwing that at me now? How many years is it going to be before you let that one go?”_ _

__“How about never?”_ _

__Wesley felt a headache begin to throb behind his temples. He had a suspicion that might have been a familiar sensation around these two. “Shall we go back to Lorne telling the story?”_ _

__The green demon looked sorrowfully at his empty glass. “Where were we? Oh yes, you and Gunnsmoke were bonding. That went on for a while as I recall.”_ _

__Gunn rolled his eyes. “There was nothing wrong with our bonding. It was clean bonding. Wholesome.”_ _

__“Fine. You were bonding in a Mom’s Apple Pie manner and in no way like a homoerotic buddy cop coupling just waiting to happen kind of way. Then Angel sleeps with Darla. Has his epiphany and…”_ _

__“Wait!” Wesley held up a hand. “Angelus – Angel slept with Darla?”_ _

__“Yes.” Angel shifted uncomfortably._ _

__“When she was a soulless vampire?”_ _

__“Yes.”_ _

__“Did you still have your soul?”_ _

__“Yes. But I was…confused.”_ _

__Buffy raised her eyebrows. “Oh is that what we’re calling it these days?”_ _

__Spike rolled his eyes. “As excuses go that one has to be the lamest ever. ‘Oh, sorry, officer, I wasn’t really picking up this hooker, she just made me all…confused’.”_ _

__“I’m waiting for the version where Connor was conceived by Angel tripping on a loose floorboard and falling awkwardly.” Gunn shrugged._ _

__“Had his epiphany,” Lorne continued relentlessly. “Saves you, Gunn and Cordy from the Skilosh demons trying to impregnate you with their spawn.”_ _

__Angel jabbed a finger at Gunn. “You forget about the demon spawn they were trying to inject into your cranium, don’t you?”_ _

__“Well, I was trying to.”_ _

__“I saved you,” Angel told Wesley quickly. “From the Skilosh. You were in a wheelchair because of getting shot.”_ _

__“Oh, was I?” Wesley wondered if he should have gone with that offer of a drink earlier instead of the cup of tea. “That was careless of me.”_ _

__“You were with Gunn when it happened.”_ _

__“I didn’t know the cop was going to shoot him! I didn’t even know Wes was coming down there. And I had no idea the cop was a zombie. Maybe if you’d bothered to communicate with us instead of running off to your other blonde…”_ _

__“Okay, boys. I can either bring Wesley up to speed with you in the room but silent or with you out of the room completely, your choice.” Lorne glared between them._ _

__Gunn said: “No, let me tell it...”_ _

__And Gunn had tried, he really had, Wesley thought, to convey it to him, a life of which he had no recollection, relationships of which he had no memory; a time when they had been abandoned by Angel, and how close they’d all grown, this man sitting next to him, and a dead woman named after the youngest daughter of King Lear._ _

__“So, Cordy would get the vision of someone in danger or something nasty arising somewhere. You’d do the research and come up with the plan. Then you and me would go out there and deal with it, together. You face danger together every day like that, you get…close. Not like Angel was saying. We never did anything like that. But we wouldn’t have been any closer if we had been.”_ _

__It occurred to him for the first time – as perhaps Gunn wanted it to – that he must have had individual relationships with all of these people. Individual friendships. When Angel was around it was difficult to think of anything but the intensity of relationship they had evidently shared; that unconvincing denial that had left Wesley more than half convinced he had, in his dealings with Angel, basically allowed a dominant male personality to once again overwhelm him into submission. He had always liked having orders to follow, rules to apply, guidelines to be…guided by. There was probably a certain confidence that came from being alive for two hundred and fifty years that someone like Wesley would have been attracted to; swept up in the slipstream of Angel’s simple-minded certainties or rather his simple-minded certainties about Angel… He blinked and realized that Gunn was still looking at him, willing him to get something. He thought perhaps he did. Gunn was also confident; not a man with too many doubts, it seemed. Another alpha male. Wesley remembered those from school and the Academy: the captain of the cricket team; captain of the football team; prefects wearily taking responsibility for ant-like first-formers. People to look up to; literally in Gunn’s case, of course, as the man was so tall._ _

__Gunn frowned. “Did I tell you who was in charge?”_ _

__Wesley blinked. Surprised it needed to be said aloud. “You.” _Of course, you.__ _

__“No, Wes. You. You were the boss. Up to a point anyway. I mean, when it came to something that Cordy had strong opinions about she was always going to put her stiletto down. But apart from when it came to interviewing hookers, you were definitely the boss.”_ _

__“Me?” Wesley tried to make sense of that. He felt a little like someone faced with a piece of inexplicable modern art for the first time. He kept walking around it but he still couldn't make it have any correlation with its label. He'd always liked to think he had leadership qualities; had thought on occasion that if people would just shut up and listen to him that he actually _did_ have leadership qualities, but every time that had been tested in the field, when they were sent out orienteering on Exmoor with a faulty compass or the like, finding that he invariably couldn't get his peers to pay any attention to him in a crisis situation had rather knocked the confidence out of him. He looked at Gunn again and still couldn't make sense of it. Wesley had managed to command the attention of the younger boys, certainly, and had taken pretty good care of them during lightning storms and snow drifts that had left them all even more cold and scared and wanting their mothers than him, but in the past he'd found that no one over the age of fourteen seemed very inclined to take him seriously._ _

__Gunn seemed unaware of his thoughts: “Same thing happened when we went to Pylea. Lorne's dimension. The rebels there voted you their leader too.”_ _

__“Ah, that would be because of my…” Wesley decided he couldn't even think of a vaguely snippy comment to make. “No, I… I don't understand.”_ _

__Gunn sighed. “Okay, we need to backtrack a little. We're all newly Angel Investigations-Without-Angel and I get a call from my old crew that the cops in this area by a shelter are beating up anyone on the street who ain't white and wearing a suit. I hook up with Rondell and George and we have this plan, right? We're going to walk down to where the cops have been beating people up and if they start anything with us we get it on tape and…”_ _

__“That was your plan?” Wesley frowned. “But isn't that…? I mean…? Wouldn't it have been a better idea to…?”_ _

__Spike, who had been listening intently, looked bemused. “Sounds like a winner to me. What's wrong with it?”_ _

__Gunn grimaced. “Okay, maybe it _was_ a dumb plan. The point is, you thought it was a dumb plan when I told Cordy about it over the phone. So, you came down to where we were being hassled by this cop – you being a white guy in a suit with a nice accent who remembers to say 'please' and 'thank you', and therefore the kind of guy the cops usually 'please' and 'thank you' to right back, and you told him that I was a friend of yours. And he shot you. Right in the gut. Because it turned out he was a zombie cop on a mission to clean up the streets and leave no witnesses and didn't give a damn how nice your diction was. And you nearly died, Wes. Trying to help out me and Rondell and George. Do you know how many hours I've spent over the years sitting in damned hospitals waiting for you to wake up?”_ _

__“I'm sorry,” Wesley said automatically. It was difficult not to respond to the level of pain in Gunn's eyes. He looked down and found that Gunn was holding his hand. It didn't feel familiar, at all. He couldn't remember a man ever holding his hand like that before; not someone trying to joke-grope him in the back of the assembly hall or during choir practice – without even the compliment paid to him of it being done with any passion, more like a way of getting at him; but as if there was a connection between them that could only be communicated by touch. He looked down at Gunn's hand clasping his own and although there was nothing about it that jogged a memory at all, it did hit him with a sudden spike of mingled pain and recognition of how much it must have meant to him to have a person like this care so much for a person like him. These must have been such dangerous friendships; too many damaged people needing the others around them too damned much. He slipped his hand loose from Gunn's grip and put it in his lap where it couldn't be reached again. But he said again, “I'm sorry.”_ _

__Lorne sighed. “Gunn, I already covered this.”_ _

__“You didn’t tell him the important things.”_ _

__“Well, it’s not a story about Wesley getting shot and being in a wheelchair for a few weeks and you carrying him to the bathroom. Would that it were because then Cordelia and Fred would still be here, but that’s not what was important.”_ _

__“It was important at the time,” Gunn insisted. “It was important to me and it was important to him.”_ _

__“We need to tell him about Fred,” Lorne insisted. “And Cordelia. And Connor.”_ _

__By the way the room seemed three degrees chillier, Wesley guessed that none of these were exactly Tales From the Riverbank stories._ _

__“Okay.” Gunn turned back to him. “We rescued a girl from Pylea – Lorne’s home dimension. Name of Winifred Burkle.”_ _

__Gunn and Spike both looked at Illyria then and she gazed back at them and then looked at Wesley. It was strange to see yearning in the eyes of an old one. Almost as strange as it had been to see Angelus, the scourge of Europe, grinning like a dork and looking as if it mattered to him so passionately that Wesley Wyndam-Pryce should still like his eggs._ _

__“You and me – we were really good friends. We both liked Fred – Winifred Burkle, but we didn’t know the other one liked her in that way. I thought you saw her as a sister. I guess you saw me seeing her the same way.”_ _

__“But surely if we’d been such close friends as you say, we would have told each other…” Wesley broke off at Gunn’s expression._ _

__“We were best friends, Wes, not girls.”_ _

__“Oh.” Wesley felt disappointed. “I always thought… I never had a best friend at school. I was hoping perhaps you could tell them anything.”_ _

__“Well, sometimes you can tell them stuff. But… anyway, we didn’t. You never had a best friend at school?”_ _

__Spike snorted. “Colour me not at all surprised.”_ _

__Gunn looked at him in irritation. “Lay off, Spike.”_ _

__“Oh, come on. You know I love Percy to pieces and all, but of course he never had a best friend at school. He was too busy asking for extra homework and double Latin with everything. Be honest. How are friendships formed anyway? In the cracks between the rules. In the moments of rebellion. In the times you…”_ _

__“Go sack a convent and share the same nun…?” Gunn enquired._ _

__Angel grimaced as Spike shrugged. “Well, yeah, okay. But, it’s being in the same team; facing down the common enemy; getting away with something you shouldn’t. You don’t make best friends turning up to lessons on time, always doing your homework when you’re supposed to and never taking a night off in case you only got a B minus instead of an A plus.”_ _

__Gunn gave Spike a last glare before turning back to Wesley. “Don’t pay attention to him.”_ _

__“No, he’s right.” Wesley saw no point in lying about it. He had been intending to bluster for six when he got to Sunnydale, cover up who he was by any means necessary, make them think he was something more than he was until he could become the person he was pretending to be. But what was the point in trying to practise any deception upon people who knew you far better than you knew yourself? “That probably is how friendships are formed because I didn’t form any. Not the kind of friendship you’re describing.”_ _

__Gunn snatched a breath. “Okay, so we’re both falling in love with Fred and not telling one another. You’re in charge of the agency. Cordy is having the visions. Angel’s not going dark side or screwing anyone he shouldn’t be. Then Darla turns up with a belly out to here and it’s pretty clear Angel left a deposit with her on their night of sleazy vamp passion that’s just about to mature.”_ _

__There was another long painful silence. Angel was gazing at the cutlery on the table, Buffy was grimacing; Giles looked as if he would really like to have been somewhere else._ _

__Gunn looked at Angel. “Do you want to…?”_ _

__The vampire shook his head. “I wouldn’t tell it right.”_ _

__Which was why it was Lorne who finally told him about Connor; the miracle child born to two vampires; whose soul had been so pure that he had contaminated his soulless mother with so much love that she had staked herself to give him life; the child sought by the eighteenth century vampire killer, Holtz, whose family Darla and Angelus had murdered so foully, and who had sought their son in retribution, and been given, when Wesley, after translating a false prophecy, had stolen the child and carried him straight into danger…_ _

__He had sat for a long time after Lorne reached that part of the story, not able to find a response. An apology seemed much too small a thing for a cock up of such monumental proportions. He wondered dispassionately how he had lived with that mistake; how he had woken up each day and gone to work knowing that he had been instrumental in sending an innocent child into a hell dimension. When Lorne had rapidly told him about Connor coming back, alive and well, and now a teenager, it had seemed to be happening a long way off. After that, the other tragedies had unfolded around him as gracefully as the wings of seagulls skimming a white-foamed sea, wailing plaintively all the while. Betrayal and the thin slit left by a sharpened blade and the white smothering of a pillow wielded by an anguished father and then a confusion of abandonment and patricide and filicide, and the woman who had almost killed him kept prisoner in his closet, and the woman who had almost killed all of them, repeatedly, a frequent visitor to his bed, and their affair and her death, and Cordelia’s possession by a rogue higher power and the beast and Angelus, and Faith, again, only a friend this time instead of a foe, and Angel accepting the keys to the kingdom of Hell, Incorporated, and then another maelstrom of disaster, confusion and resurrection and Cordelia’s false awakening from the coma that had claimed her, and the vision she had given to Angel of the coming apocalypse and Fred, whom he had loved, apparently, yet did not remember, and who had died in his arms, most tragically, and whose corpse had been reborn as Illyria. And the scalpel he had jabbed into Gunn, and the smashing of the window of Orlon and the return of his memories and fleeing of his sanity. And then it had all been very apocalyptic and dramatic and he had done something reckless or self-sacrificing, depending on one’s interpretation, and ended up in a hell dimension, with only Angel for company, and been captured and enslaved, and survived, and returned with a bomb wired up inside him, which Willow had removed and in the process mislaid five years of his memories._ _

__And all of it so long ago and far away and nothing to do with him. Except that he had been in the thick of all of it and now at least he knew why, when he looked in the mirror, this was the reflection that gazed back at him._ _

__“I did forgive you,” Angel said abruptly. “I forgave you when I was under the sea. I just wanted it back how it was before. I had these…murderous impulses towards Connor, even towards Cordelia, for not having met me. But not for you. I knew all the time that you did it to save Connor. I just couldn’t forgive you right away for having betrayed my trust and for having lost my son.”_ _

__Wesley forgot Angel was a vampire for a moment; the brown eyes just seeming to belong to that of a man; and a man with whom he evidently had a very intense and very complicated history. “Those are things I probably couldn’t forgive either.”_ _

__“Sweetie…”_ _

__Wesley turned in surprise to find the green demon looking at him intently._ _

__“We’ve filled you in on what you’re not remembering and now we need to know if you’re still you… The memories you’ve lost. If they’re gone completely or if you just can’t access them because of a kink in the spell. I have a little experience with memory spells, myself, and although the one I know isn’t exactly foolproof…”_ _

__“You can say that again…” Gunn muttered._ _

__“…I think Willow and I can fine tune it between us. But only if you’re…still in there.”_ _

__Wesley thought about what he must be; this wrecked remnant of a man who had caused so much pain and endured so many losses; a dark kernel within him, twisted and broken. There was a razor blade inside the man he was now that the past had made his previous self swallow, and which had now worked its way into his brain. He could almost feel it, a bright coolness on the edge of his cerebral cortex, and if he were not very careful it would find a way to cut him open, and let all his dangerous memories spill out. But all he said aloud was: “How do you propose to find out?”_ _

__“You have to sing.”_ _

__“Sing?” Wesley thought about saying that he couldn’t possibly, then realized that he didn’t have the right. It was strange to be here, and feel entirely complete, and to be only a potential bridge to these people to the man they’d lost._ _

__“If those memories are gone, they’re gone,” Angel added at once. “We’re all agreed that there’s only one try to get them back – supposing you even want them back – and if it doesn’t work, there’s a new beginning.”_ _

__“Any spell is dangerous, Wesley,” Giles said quietly. “None of us want to put you at any more risk than you have been already. You’ve been the victim of three alterations of your memory now. Once when a previous spell of Lorne’s backfired, once when the Senior Partners played with your memories to eradicate Connor, and now as a consequence of removing the bomb that was inside you you’ve been returned to this…earlier setting. If a spell devised by Willow, Lorne and myself can’t restore your memory to you we’d rather not attempt it again. As Angel has pointed out, you’re…you. You have your childhood memories, adolescent memories. You have much of the knowledge that made you such an excellent researcher and could continue those studies on the foundations you still have. And you’re…in your right mind.”_ _

__“Five years ago, Gunn didn’t know you, Lorne didn’t know you, Spike didn’t know you, and Illyria didn’t exist. I hardly knew you, and what I knew I didn’t particularly like. We built those friendships from nothing. We can do it again.” Angel gazed into his eyes with that strange intensity which was so unsettling. An intensity which so far Wesley had been unable to decide if it came from the man or the demon. “Or you can have a different life without us. Either way you get to choose.”_ _

__Wesley moistened his lips and then turned to Lorne. “I’ll sing for you. Alone, if you wouldn’t mind.”_ _

__Lorne nodded. “Okay, cupcake. Let’s go into your old office and see what we can learn. Do you have a song picked out?”_ _

__Wesley half-smiled. “‘Yesterday’ seems the most appropriate.”_ _

__As he followed Lorne upstairs to the office he didn’t know which was stronger – his instinctive fierce rejection of having to accept the reality of this life he had lost, and his desire to be complete again, and honestly who he was, even if the man he was happened to be honestly and completely a basketcase. He almost hoped they would take the decision out of his hands of whether or not he should stay with his ‘new setting’ or be given back the memories that were gone. He supposed the only person who could answer that question was the person he had been a moment before the spell had taken place; the one currently either permanently erased or lost in limbo; the person whom perhaps Lorne might be able to read as a shadow behind his own faltering rendition of a song about having lost everything and never being able to get it back._ _

__***_ _

__They all looked at Lorne expectantly as he walked back into the dining room._ _

__“So…?” Angel demanded._ _

__The green demon inclined his head expressively. “All done. I sent our handsome amnesiac off to bye-bye land. The mind may be as fresh as a newly-trained Watcher but the body just got back from a hell dimension. After ‘Yesterday’ and a run through of ‘White Rabbit’ the boy needs his eight hours. And incidentally who knew Wes was big with the Grace Slick love? I was tempted to ask him for ‘Across the Board’ just to see what he did with that ‘seven inches of pleasure’ line but my natural compassion intervened in time.”_ _

__“Lorne…?”_ _

__Lorne sat down and poured himself a drink. “It’s all in there. And I can read it. In fact I can read it better than I ever could before because Wes doesn’t know it’s there and isn’t throwing up all those little barriers you humans usually do. Right now, that boy is an open door to his buried psyche. He can’t reach those memories but they’re there all right, and how.”_ _

__Angel nodded. “So, at least the guy we know is still in there.”_ _

__“Did you learn anything…new…?” Gunn said it tentatively, knowing as he did so that he was basically asking Lorne if the guy had sneaked a peek, at the same time feeling it was important that they knew everything._ _

__“Oh yeah. Like for instance, Wesley’s father? Not a nice guy. I can’t believe I told him my best stories. If I’d known…” The demon sighed. “And why he went to see Holtz?” He looked across at Angel. “I only got a couple of bars of a lullaby last time, but today I had two whole songs, with all the choruses – I insisted on that – and it was all in there. He offered his life for yours. Told Holtz we were his family and he wanted to avert bloodshed, tried to appeal to him as a reasonable man, explained that the demon who’d killed his family didn’t exist any more and he might as well kill Wesley for it as kill you. It was half desperation, half death wish. There were a lot of people in that place and Wes went in there alone. Same deal with the Loa. He knew it would probably kill him and when it threatened to he told it to go ahead. It told him betrayal and agony lay in wait for him.”_ _

__“It got that right,” said Gunn glumly._ _

__Lorne nodded. “Just so, crumbcake. He was just trying to save us all, the poor idiot. Save everyone from Holtz. Save Connor from you. Save you from yourself. That boy has a martyr complex and a half. He tried so hard to keep Gunn and Fred safe… when they turned against him it was almost the end for him. He was trying to drink himself to death when Lilah started picking on him. And it was picking _on_ not picking up at first. Like some nasty little girl pulling his hair in the school playground. But she was the only human being talking to him so after a while he started to think anything was better than the silence….”_ _

__“Don’t.” Gunn looked at him while the Sunnydale people looked at one another, wincing at a battle that wasn’t theirs, that they hadn’t witnessed and barely understood. “Just…don’t. I can’t make it right now, I can’t ever make it right, any more than he can make right taking Connor.”_ _

__“Muffin, I’m as guilty as the next demon. I just wanted to share the burden a little. He thought it was wrong to tell any of us because he’d be asking us to suffer what he was suffering as well as risking our lives if Angel didn’t take the stealing-his-only-son plan well. And let’s face it, we know how well Angel took it…”_ _

__Angel’s turn to wince. “If he’d told me we could have come up with a better plan.”_ _

__“He has a prophecy telling him that you were going to kill an innocent baby, Angel, and a Loa telling him that he would know when that was going to happen because of the earthquake, fire and blood. And no reason to think the prophecy was false.”_ _

__Earthquake. Fire. Blood. As if he were seeing it in front of him, he remembered the look on Wesley’s face as he crouched in the corridor, dazed from his impact with the doorway where Angel had thrown him to safety; blood spattering on Connor’s blanket; the flames still roaring in the burning room from the earthquake-caused fire. And another memory, so sharp and clear:_ _

__“…Life is funny. Listening to stupid people talking to hamburgers is funny. Worrying about things that will never...It’s all so incredibly funny and – and beautiful.”_ _

__He closed his eyes. “He was going to ignore it. Even though the Loa had confirmed the prophecy, he’d decided against it anyway, because there was no point in worrying about ‘things that will never…’ “ He put a hand to his head. “And then there was the quake, the fire, the blood…”_ _

__“You’re not wrong, Angelcakes, but how do you know?” Lorne frowned at him._ _

__“He told me,” Angel groaned. “He was sitting on my bed, looking like he’d just been spat out of the ninth circle of hell, and he smiled for the first time in…forever and said that life was funny and beautiful. And now I know why – because I loved my son and he wasn’t going to have to take him after all.”_ _

__“Yes.” Lorne sighed. “I don’t know how you know, but you’re right. He got to a place where he’d decided not to take Connor after all and then all three portents hit him like an oncoming train. I just don’t understand how you…?”_ _

__“It’s that vamp memory recall thing, isn’t it?” Gunn edged his chair away another inch. “That creeps me out every time.”_ _

__“I’m thinking we should have a moratorium on prophecies for a good long time,” Buffy observed. “Especially false ones.”_ _

__“It wasn’t false.” Angel looked around at them. “Does everyone not get that yet? The prophecy was true.”_ _

__“And again I’m wondering how you know?” Lorne looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Have you been eavesdropping on my reading?”_ _

__“The Beast arose in an earthquake followed by a rain of fire, and it was a blood spell I had to make to give Connor his new memories.”_ _

__Lorne nodded. “Right again. The prophecy was true.”_ _

__“No.” Gunn pushed back his chair. “It a lie. Sahjhan…”_ _

__“Sahjhan changed the prophecy, it’s true. The original one said only that Connor was going to kill Sahjhan. He tried to alter it so that wouldn’t come true but what he actually did was create a new prophecy that was just an addendum to the old one. By interfering he ensured that Angel really would have to kill his son. And he did. Angel doesn’t have a son any more, or didn’t up until very recently. Connor was the son of the parents he remembers. That was his life. Angel was no longer his father. Then, ironically, in trying to undo what Angel had done, Wesley simultaneously gave Angel back his son and saved Connor’s life – if Wesley hadn’t broken the Orlon Window, Sahjhan would have killed Connor, but because of Connor getting his memories back at the critical moment, Sahjhan died and Connor lives – his memories intact, Angel’s son again, but this time happy and well-adjusted.”_ _

__“So, Wes saved Connor?” Gunn looked up in shock. “And the prophecy was…? He didn’t do anything…?”_ _

__“He was a cog in fate’s wheel, honeybuns. Some things aren’t as evitable as we might like. As soon as Sahjhan changed the prophecy he sealed everyone’s fate, ironically, including his own.”_ _

__“Then when I assisted Wesley to gain the Window of Orlon I was in fact helping Angel while only bringing back more painful memories for Wesley.” Illyria looked bleak._ _

__“Painful or not, they were his, and he was entitled to them.” Gunn said. “We are what we did.”_ _

__“Then I’m a monster.” Angel met his gaze. “And I don’t know what Wesley is.”_ _

__“Sleeping, I hope.” Lorne rose to his feet. “And I need to do the same. As readings go that was a humdinger and the inside of Wesley’s mind – not the cosiest place to be. It’s no wonder the poor munchkin ended up crazier than a box of jumping beans.”_ _

__“And now he has a second chance.” As Lorne wended his slightly unsteady way away, Angel looked down at his hands; the same ones that had held the pillow pressed over Wesley’s face. “He can forget all the bad times.”_ _

__“And the good times.” Giles picked up the photograph of Wesley, Cordelia and Angel that had been left on the dining room table. “He’ll be forgetting those too.”_ _

__“There were less of those.” Gunn rubbed his head, wishing everything wasn’t so complicated, that their lives hadn’t sucked quite so much these past five years._ _

__“Are you saying…?” Angel looked across at him._ _

__“I don’t know what I’m saying. The point is we’re not going to be the ones making that decision anyway, Wesley is. We told him everything that happened, now it’s up to him if he wants to remember that stuff or not.”_ _

__“But what do you want him to decide?” Buffy enquired._ _

__Gunn looked down at the plate in front of him. “I don’t want to lose my friend again.”_ _

__Xander said quietly: “And which way do you think is the most likely to make that happen?”_ _

__“I think it happens either way. Either he doesn’t remember me or he’s driven so crazy by getting his memories back that it doesn’t matter that he remembers me because he’s still no one I know.”_ _

__“He was a kind of happy crazy…” Buffy offered tentatively._ _

__Willow nodded. “Yes, I thought he was still in there. He was kind of…spacey, but he remembered the past and he was still sane sometimes.”_ _

__“He was brilliant.” Gunn looked up at them bleakly. “The guy I met, the guy who became my friend. He was so smart and so…good. He knew what right and wrong was. He knew where his place in the world was. He believed in what he was doing. He had issues, yeah sure, who doesn’t? Being an insecure guy whose daddy never loved him made him come across like a pompous little jerk sometimes, but he was in his right mind.” He closed his eyes and saw Wesley in that office with the books all over the floor, listening to his watch as he scampered about in his socks like some half-tamed creature from a fairy tale. Unable to say Fred’s name and so proud of himself because he’d found a way to circumvent it. Articulating his thoughts without even knowing he was doing so and his thoughts being so tangled. “I miss my friend,” he said sadly. “But I think I may have been one of the people who helped kill him a long time before now.”_ _

__“Don’t…” Angel bowed his head._ _

__“Angel, what you did to him…”_ _

__“I know.” Angel gazed into the half-empty jug of orange juice as if it contained all the secrets of the universe._ _

__“You broke him into so many pieces. I don’t think there’s a way to glue him back together again.”_ _

__“Why are you dumping all this on Angel?” Buffy demanded. “Weren’t the rest of you there too?”_ _

__“Because I’m the one who tried to smother him, I’m the one who couldn’t forgive him, and I’m the one who stole his memories. And I’m the one who took us all to Wolfram & Hart and got Fred killed.”_ _

__“You’re also the one who followed him into a hell dimension,” Giles pointed out. “Who kept him alive in that place; whom he trusted absolutely; body and soul, and I mean that literally.”_ _

__“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Angel looked across at Gunn. “I tried giving him the edited highlights of his life before. I left him what I hoped were the good memories and I took away what I thought must be the worst memories, all it did was make him unstable and confused even before he got the bad memories back again.”_ _

__Gunn nodded. “I know.”_ _

__Xander gazed across at Gunn. “You were the one who said he should have his memories back.”_ _

__“Maybe Angel’s right. Maybe we’ve done Wes enough damage. Maybe the best thing we can do for him now is to let him go home with Giles and start over again where we can’t screw up his life for him any more.”_ _

__“He’s your friend,” Buffy said quietly. “You don’t give up on friends.”_ _

__“The thing is we did. Maybe you didn’t with yours. Maybe the mistakes you made didn’t involve turning your backs on them when they needed you the most, but we did. That’s the reality. We can’t change that.”_ _

__“There’s no evidence that Wesley perceived things like that even if you do,” Giles returned._ _

__Gunn half laughed. “As accusations go, how does ‘I had my throat cut and all my friends abandoned me’ sound to you?”_ _

__“Is that what he said?” Angel looked at Gunn in dismay._ _

__Gunn nodded bleakly. “You know the best part? At the time, I didn’t even let myself care. Christ, Angel. He made a mistake. A really terrible stupid awful mistake that had really terrible stupid awful consequences but shouldn’t we have…? I don’t know. I just can’t help thinking. Would it have killed us to hear his side…?”_ _

__“How did he survive?” Xander asked. “If his throat was cut, I mean. Why didn’t he just bleed to death?”_ _

__“Gunn and Fred found him.” Angel nodded across at Gunn. “They saw Justine was driving his car and followed her, got her to tell them what she’d done to Wes, then went out looking for him. They got to him just in time.”_ _

__“So, then, he’s alive because his friends did care, isn’t he?” Xander insisted._ _

__“We cared enough to not want him dead, yes.”_ _

__“You knew that he’d only been trying to protect Connor?”_ _

__“Not at first, we didn’t know anything. Fred was sure he couldn’t have done anything wrong and I didn’t care if he had or not I just wanted to find him before Angel did.”_ _

__“Then you did care about him,” Willow pointed out. “Even though he’d done something terrible.” As Gunn just slumped in misery, she said, “Look, everyone here knows my history. I tried to destroy the world. I flayed a guy alive. And I was a real _bitch_ to my friends. But they forgave me. Maybe not right away but they did it. Didn’t you forgive Wesley? I mean, you were all working together in your stupid evil law firm, weren’t you?”_ _

__“Yes, we were.”_ _

__“Wesley stole Angel’s baby and he was brought up in a Hell dimension as a consequence and yes, it sounds like Angel took it about as badly as anyone could, but it wasn’t permanent, was it? I mean when Wesley turned up at this hotel the next time, did you spit on him or what?”_ _

__Angel shrugged. “I told him everything was okay between us but he didn’t believe me. He thought I was just fishing for information about Cordelia.”_ _

__Xander was the one to look Angel in the eye. “Were you?”_ _

__“No, I actually wasn’t. I just assumed he wanted to come home, that he’d been waiting for me to tell him it was okay for him to come back, and that we’d all look for Cordy together, like old times. I’d thought of him as a guy waiting to be invited back, not someone who’d moved on. I didn’t know what the gripe was between him and Gunn. I still don’t really.”_ _

__“He shut me out and then he shut me out.” Gunn finished a waffle despondently in between sentences. “He didn’t tell me about the prophecy and then he doesn’t tell me where you were. Fred and I we’re working our asses off trying to find a clue about where you were, where Cordy was. Three months of big fat zip. Then Wesley just turns up with you out of nowhere. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what the number was. He could have called, explained he’d got Justine, that he knew what had happened, but, no, he has to play the lone ranger and leave me looking like an idiot.”_ _

__“Do you really think that’s why he did it?” Giles frowned._ _

__Gunn sighed. “No. I think he was on his atonement kick and he and Justine were the only people left alive apart from Connor responsible for how things had turned out with Angel, so they were the ones that had to find Angel and save him so he could put a little check mark next to their names in the Crimes Paid For column. But it didn’t look that way from where I was sitting. It looked like Wesley gave so little of a shit about Fred and me that he didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to tell us we were sharing a hotel with a psycho and had so little respect for us as people that he wasn’t even prepared to pool resources with us when we were all looking for the same thing. You have no idea how mad I was with him about that. I felt like he’d just wiped his feet on me, then pissed on the dirt tracks.”_ _

__“I presume that was pretty much how he felt about you all telling him that he needn’t ever show his face in the Hyperion again?” Giles observed._ _

__Gunn shrugged. “It probably was, which is probably why I leapt to the conclusion that him going after Angel alone was another way of punishing us. I also thought he was trying to make me look like an incompetent ass in front of the woman I loved and who he had a thing for, and as an incompetent ass was pretty much what I felt like, I wasn’t feeling any too forgiving. The worst thing was that it made me feel like I didn’t know him, had never known him. That the guy I’d thought was my friend had never even existed.”_ _

__“And now he does not,” Illyria observed._ _

__“I’m never going to get you, Chuck,” Spike told him. “Wes doesn’t let you in on his plan to save laughing boy from the fishes and you pitch a year long hissy fit, but he stabs you in the guts and you’re fine about it?”_ _

__“I deserved the stab. I didn’t deserve to be shut out of a plan to try to find Angel when finding Angel was what Fred and I were driving ourselves nuts trying to do.”_ _

__Xander looked at Willow. “I’m starting to feel comparatively well-adjusted. Let’s stay here always.”_ _

__***_ _

__Angel had to get away for a while. Looking at Gunn was too much like looking at himself; morose and depressed about a past that couldn’t be altered. He’d already played that card. It hadn’t worked._ _

__He’d gone to his room to look for Wesley, just to see if he needed anything, to see if he was sleeping, but he wasn’t there. Of course, he wasn’t there. Lorne had found him a room somewhere else, probably with clean sheets to go with his wiped clean memories. He kept getting flashbacks to Wesley in Sunnydale wearing that stupid Watcher’s suit; all buttoned up and pompous, and underneath so vulnerable and scared. Except he hadn’t realized it back then, of course, too much going on, and no one else had ever come into real focus for him back then compared with Buffy. He’d been fond of them, certainly, Willow and Cordy; Giles, despite the inevitable guilt, perhaps even Xander, despite the inevitable irritation. But Buffy had been the white noise drowning out all other signals. So, Wesley had been something on the periphery of his vision._ _

__He’d never been good with men; never had a male friend. Spike had irritated him when he’d been Angelus; they’d only ever been temporarily allies against common foes. He’d enjoyed tormenting him over Drusilla and then teasing him with the appearance of friendship; enjoyed him fucking him too from time to time when there was nothing better in the offing. Spike had possibly thought of him as a friend though; he’d kept more of his humanity, galling though it was for him to admit it, so perhaps he’d craved the company of a friend. Angelus never had. Doyle had been the first, really. He’d always been more comfortable in the company of women before then. It never felt like such a concession to admit a weakness in front of them. Perhaps because loving his mother and his sister had come as naturally as breathing, but his father had always been someone he couldn’t make into what he needed him to be. No doubt his father would have rejoiced to see the wreckage that had been his relationship with Connor. _See how well _you_ manage without recourse to anger or violence, to threats and to blame_. At least he’d always told Connor that he loved him. But it hadn’t been enough; Connor had craved family more even than he’d craved truth. Ultimately, the mind wipe had saved him. _ _

__In the back of his mind he’d thought that truth might apply to Wesley, too. He’d craved family as well, and for the same reason, because he’d never really known it. He wondered how fucked up a man you had to be to be incapable of loving your own child. Of wanting to see them falter and fail; to prefer for them to feel fear of you when they were so ready and willing to offer you love. To take some kind of malicious pleasure in crushing their self-confidence, in making them question everything; of sucking all the joy and enthusiasm out of their world. He would almost have respected Roger Wyndam-Pryce more if the man had been an honest sadist, but he just knew that through every step taken to crush Wesley a little further into the dirt, he’d told himself it was for the child’s own good; never able to look straight in the eye of his own dislike; to admit that he had no love for this boy, only a combination of ambition and fear of being overtaken that combined into something indistinguishable from spite._ _

__He’d had the power to take away the memories that related to Connor; to the mistake Wesley had made because of who Angel was; who he’d been, what he was to Wesley; and he’d done it because it was possible. And at once he’d been so much lonelier. When they shared a glance after the mindwipe it had something missing. Wesley looked at him with all the old affection and respect and it didn’t mean as much as it should have done because it didn’t come from a place of full memory. It didn’t mean that Wesley had learned to trust in their friendship again, had forgiven him for the pillow, or accepted that Angel had forgiven him for the betrayal of his trust, it just meant that he didn’t remember they had ever been anything other than friends._ _

__At least he’d found the courage to admit to Wesley that he liked him dependent. It wasn’t a truth he was proud of it, but he’d still said it aloud. He’d hated what Wesley had been through in that hell dimension, the beatings, the branding, the claws tearing his skin, the starvation and sleep deprivation, the constant fear of a messy death. But it had been like getting that first Wesley back, too. The one who trusted him, looked up to him, believed in him. Perhaps he and Gunn had both had a problem with Wesley not needing them. He’d never thought about Gunn’s perspective. He had to be honest. It had simply bewildered him, this unwarranted hostility from the man who had once been Wesley’s friend. It hadn’t been all about Connor. It seemed ludicrous for it to be all about Fred. But perhaps it had been about being rejected so absolutely on a personal level. Wesley and Gunn had both turned away from one another and been left reeling in a place of mutual pain and rage._ _

__Suddenly, when Gunn was talking, he had remembered a scene the man hadn’t even been in. Wesley dithering in the car as Angel waited impatiently for him to act like the leader he knew he could be; saying so helplessly: ‘We don’t have Gunn…’ He hadn’t liked them bonding, he could admit it in the privacy of his head, not that it was exactly a secret anyway after the way he’d snapped at Gunn about it earlier. But he didn’t deny that they _had_ bonded, and for a while there Gunn had been the person who made Wesley feel safe. He’d envied Gunn that – the way Wesley didn’t fear him. It had seemed strange to him, even in the midst of his own swirling emotions of jealousy about Cordelia and Connor and residual anger towards Wesley for the stealing of his son, that Gunn should want to earn that fear. Should want Wesley to do what he’d used to do for Angel, and flinch a little if he moved too fast, loomed too large. Doctor Freud would have had a field day with all of them, no doubt. Maybe on some subconscious level Gunn had thought that as Wesley had started off scared of Angel and ended up trusting him, that to rebuild their friendship he first had to make him afraid of him. Or maybe he’d just been feeling as pissed off and irrational as they all were back then._ _

__Either way, they’d both known a time when Wesley had been dependent on them. Gunn, when Wesley was in a wheelchair, and he when on Askaroth. And there had been times of dependency in between them. The guy who had first arrived in LA had needed Angel to take care of him even on the level of stopping him starving to death, as well as giving him a purpose, and some of the affirmation his father had always so cruelly withheld. And no doubt even before he was shot, Wesley had needed Gunn. He could hardly have fought demons alone and it wasn’t as if Angel had been around to…_ _

__He winced. So many mistakes between them. Buffy talked about the Sunnydale scoobies screwing up but they had been high school kids allying themselves to a girl on the side of good. His people had already made their mistakes, already had their past sins to atone for, and had allied themselves with a vampire of mythic viciousness._ _

__It was strange to look at his new Wesley, who looked like the Wesley they knew but inside was the Wesley from Sunnydale, only without the need to impress anyone, not trying to be anything he wasn’t. Sometimes he saw the man begin a gesture or phrase that looked as if it was going to lead to some pronouncement, or absurdity, and then there was that mental shrug, the memory kicking in, presumably, that these people knew him better than himself. He had almost seen Wesley quietly severing the bonds between his past self and who he was now; ready to despise him out of habit._ _

__The man knew intellectually that he’d been allied with them for half a decade, but Angel couldn’t blame him for still feeling like a Watcher. Of course his ties to England would be stronger than his ties to America, his ties to the Council stronger than his ties to a group of demon-killers from LA. Giles was the only one of them this new Wesley would be able to relate to. Giles and Faith between them could find a way to shelter him. They both owed him. Giles must know that he could have handled things better back in Sunnydale; could have made more allowances for Wesley’s youth and inexperience, and he doubted Faith needed any reminding about what she owed to the man who had put aside all those hours of torture to risk his life on her behalf. Faith had certainly paid her debt to Angel when she risked her sanity and humanity to capture Angelus alive, but he wasn’t sure anyone except Wesley – the old Wesley who was now just a group of forgotten memories in a sealed off compartment in this new Wesley’s head – believed that she had paid her debt to him. So, he knew if he asked her that she would take Wesley on as her Watcher and keep him safe from too many difficult questions, from the people who might want to get at Angel through him, from the Council who might still have a grudge. She’d let him feel useful and make sure that he became useful; train him as her Watcher while letting him think he was training her as his Slayer. She might even come to love him, in her way; he’d found Wesley pretty lovable, after all, and Faith wasn’t as tough a cookie as she liked to pretend. Wesley could have a useful life as Faith’s Watcher, and Angel trusted Giles to find a way to make the paperwork happen; to ensure that he was paid, wasn’t hassled for the past crimes of the Wesley he didn’t remember being, and, please god, to keep his father off his back._ _

__But it would involve letting go. Delegating Wesley to someone else’s care. Accepting once and for all that he’d had his go at being Wesley’s protector and friend and had screwed up. Except –_ _

__This one last time he really hadn’t. Wesley had done the right thing diving into that hell dimension. No question. And Angel had done the right thing diving after him. And he had kept him alive and given him a feeling of safety even in the midst of all the horror and pain. They’d stuck together, grown closer than they’d ever been before, and they’d survived because of it. And at night they’d curled up together and known that they’d made it through another day and weren’t dead or dusted yet. It was going to be difficult trying to sleep tonight without the sound of Wesley’s heartbeat, without the warmth of him against his skin. He’d never had that before; not night after night; a naked human in his arms, warm-blooded and trusting. He missed the trust most of all. The way Wesley had used to offer him his arm in their cage, looking up at him with those terrible shadows under eyes that had grown curiously innocent:_ _

__“Angel, you have to…”_ _

__“You don’t have enough to spare…”_ _

__“You can’t win without it and if you lose we both know that I’m dead too…”_ _

__And then when he couldn’t stand the sight of those bruises on his thin arms and had moved onto the inside of his thigh; the same place he’d bitten that gypsy girl before he raped her and killed her, the skin so soft there, and the warm pulse of blood, hesitating in fang face, the hunger tearing at him, afraid that if he once started to drink he wouldn’t be able to stop. Whispering it; his fear that this might be the time he went too far._ _

__Wesley leaning against the bars, half-dead already from lack of food, whispering back: “Angel, how do you think I’d rather die? Feeding you or feeding a Gorlax Demon?”_ _

__He’d thought of what the Gorlax Demon would do to Wesley before it killed him, the slow peeling of his skin, the eating of his organs while his heart was still beating, because the liver tasted better in a live body than a dead one, and he’d sunk his teeth into Wesley’s thigh and drunk deep. And Wesley had barely even flinched, just closing his eyes as the teeth went in and then drifting into the pulse of blood being lapped from him, as if he were on a boat being gently rocked by the sea. It was always Angel who had to tear himself away, hunger screaming at him to take another gulp. Then his hand across the wound, lifting Wesley up, hissing his name, making those eyes flicker open again._ _

__“Stay with me.”_ _

__“It makes me sleepy.”_ _

__“It makes you very close to dead.”_ _

__“Peaceful way to go.” A half-smile from him, drowsy, even as Angel felt how much colder he was from the blood loss, wrapping his right arm around him and pulling him against his body while he kept his left hand clasped across his thigh, tilting his leg up to slow the blood flow, waiting for his saliva to do its trick and close the puncture wounds before too much precious liquid was lost. Wishing vainly for a body temperature with which he could warm him to make up for that lost heat. Wesley murmuring once: “They can’t have suffered much, Angel. The people Angelus killed. It’s just like going to sleep.”_ _

__He hadn’t had the heart to remind him that he’d made sure that they suffered because he liked the way fear tasted on his tongue, he’d just pulled him in closer and told him they would be getting out of here somehow, he promised…_ _

__Angel realized the world was blurry and had to blink hard. He’d lost that Wesley. A fitting punishment indeed because he’d never deserved to have the Wesley he’d evidently wanted all this time; the child-substitute and best friend, who loved him best, to whom everyone else was a distant shadow: Fred, Gunn, Lorne, Cordelia. Faded faces from a time that had the texture of a dream. Only Angel was real and three-dimensional and here with him in their mutual nightmare. He’d always had sharing issues. Perhaps the hell dimension they’d fallen into had been his secret paradise; a place where he was nothing but a hero and the choices were all so simple, kill or be killed, destroy the bad and save the good, and where Wesley loved only him and loved him unconditionally and with absolute trust. Almost the Wesley in his perfect day fantasy; a construct of Angel’s imagination. He’d followed someone mentally fragile into a place of darkness and suffering and been the only comfort in it, the only familiar thing, the protector and friend and provider of everything. There had been no guilt in that place, of course, because he’d felt like a champion – how could he not be when he was saving Wesley every single day? Not a shade of grey to be seen. Everything black and white and so simple they didn’t ever have to doubt. Keeping Wesley alive had been the goal and the prize; the only mission; every day in which he managed it, he fell asleep a hero._ _

__He grimaced at his own simplicity, but still went looking for him; unable to stop himself scenting the air as he walked along the familiar corridors. They should never have left this place. Never made that devil’s bargain. Except – Connor was happy and Buffy was alive and Spike was, if not alive, at least undead again and the Hellmouth had closed with the evil dead on the right side of it, and none of those things would have happened if he hadn’t taken the deal. But Fred was dead and Illyria now stood in her place; Wesley’s crush upon a woman who couldn’t decide if she wanted him for a brother or a lover turned to forgotten grief and the stirrings of painful emotion in a breast that had never been intended to know human love._ _

__Lorne had left the bedroom door ajar and he couldn’t help pushing it open wider, going inside, and there he was. Angel’s eyes adjusted quickly and he saw Wesley; so thin and with that hair Willow had cut to make him look like the Wesley Lilah had fucked all those tangled lifetimes ago. He edged closer, not wanting to wake him, but drawn by it all the same, the rapid beating of his heart. If he was asleep he was dreaming of something that frightened him. Had he inherited the nightmares of the Wesley whose thoughts were locked inside his head? How strange it would be for him to dream of things that he had never even glimpsed. Wesley had been worn new by sorcery; the outer husk so battered by life; the inner man still barely bruised. He sat down on the bed, carefully, but it still dipped, tilting Wesley towards him. He bent and listened to his heartbeat, breathed in his scent, closed his eyes and pretended this was still the man who knew him; the friend he’d carried safely back from hell._ _

__“Angelcakes…”_ _

__Angel looked up at that whisper from Lorne. “I was just…”_ _

__“I know.” Lorne spoke gently: “But he needs his sleep. Half dead even before the magical mojo played flip-flop with his memory banks, remember?”_ _

__“I just needed to…” He could hear the rhythmic beat of Wesley’s heart, just as he’d heard it every night for the previous eight months. The sound that said his friend was still alive. He wanted to touch his hair. He remembered the feel of Connor’s skin against his palm. Not the teenager who had inherited the love he’d felt for the infant, but the baby Wesley had stolen; the milk scent of him something he could still recall sometimes. Wesley’s fear and sweat scent had become as comforting to him on Askorath as Connor’s baby scent had been. An anchor telling him he wasn’t alone; that the fight was worth it; that he could make a difference; perhaps even one day gain a reward, because the Powers had granted him a child; the Powers had let him save his friend._ _

__He wanted to just curl up with him and in the morning Wesley would be the man who remembered Askaroth and didn’t care because they were safe now and home again, but who remembered it all the same, and found it comforting to wake up with Angel beside him, instead of Angel being some Watcher nightmare made real._ _

__“Angel…” Lorne took him firmly by the arm. “He doesn’t know you, remember? He needs to know he’s safe here, whatever he decides…”_ _

__“I was thinking we could send for Faith,” Angel whispered hoarsely. “Have her come and meet him. See how they get on. See how he feels.”_ _

__“Not here. You’ll wake him.” Lorne pulled him towards the doorway, and Angel let himself be towed, resistant but unable to think of a reason why he should stay that wasn’t just because he wanted to._ _

__

__Lying in the bed, Wesley wondered if the vampire could hear the hammering of his heart. He had been awake the whole time; and his heart had flipped over when Angelus had crept into his room; stealthy, feet silent on the carpet, looming over him. And yet… He’d sensed it. All that yearning. Not hunger. Just…no one had ever crept into his room like that before, not trying to catch him out or play a trick on him, just wanting to be near him, to have his company. He’d positively sensed Angel willing him to wake up. Whatever the vampire said it was obvious that what he wanted was the old Wesley back; the crazy ex-Watcher who evidently loved him so unconditionally that he’d followed him to hell. Oh no, that wasn’t right, was it? It was Angel who had followed Wesley into hell._ _

__He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t felt it, from Angel in particular, but the same vibe from everyone else as well. It had taken him a little while to identify the feeling, it was so alien to him, but just then when the bed had creaked under the vampire’s weight, when he’d heard him sigh and felt his fingers so gently touch his hair, he’d known that this was what he’d waited for in vain for all those years at home. It had scared him far more than a boogy man emerging from under the bed. Made the panic freeze in his throat because it was so alien and terrifying and he had no guidelines or rulebook to show him how to deal with it._ _

__The first time in his life he had ever been offered unconditional love and he found himself afraid to accept it. He didn’t know if he was afraid because the person offering it to him was a vampire, or because he was afraid that if he accepted it, it might be withdrawn. It had evidently been withdrawn before; with crushing effect. Apparently they had all offered him love and the promise of always loving him, and then taken it away completely. He almost gasped aloud at the thought of it. Of how terrible that must have been, to have all that lost warmth he had never known suddenly flooding through his veins, and then the chill. Like becoming one of the vampires he had been trained since birth to help destroy. He shivered and pulled the covers over himself, still feeling that ghostly sigh against his cheek and those fingertips so gently brushing his hair. It was such a terrible seduction these people offered him; the lure of belonging; perhaps it was better just to escape them now before the spell was cast a second time; while he still had his sanity and still remembered who he was: a Watcher trained to assist a Slayer in her hereditary duties, not the devoted acolyte of a vampire and his mixed bag of demon hunters._ _

__Wesley closed his eyes up tightly and did his best to fall asleep._ _

__***  
“Is it your intention to remove Wesley from this place?”_ _

__Giles looked up in surprise to find the strange blue-haired Illyria gazing at him intently. Her voice and face were invariably impassive but he had noticed that whenever any emotion did wash across her face it was always to do with Wesley. He did find it a little strange that the uptight young man who had proven himself so astonishingly inept with women in Sunnydale should have won the heart of this god-king of the ancient world._ _

__“That will be his decision.”_ _

__Lorne had given him a box of photographs, saying that as Giles knew almost as little about the past five years of Wesley’s life as Wesley did, what would these photographs say to him?_ _

__Feeling it was something of an exercise in futility but wanting to at least show willing to these semi-bereaved people, Giles had begun to spread out the photographs on the lobby desk. Now Illyria gazed at them, head on one side, pointing to people in turn:_ _

__“That is Cordelia.”_ _

__“I know.” Giles looked at her curiously, this strange creature with another woman’s memories in her mind but possibly no way of fully comprehending them in context because she didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to do so. “Cordelia was at High School with Buffy, Willow and Xander.”_ _

__“Fred had feelings of friendship for her. She appeared to have awoken from her coma but was in fact already dead. Fred felt feelings of grief at her loss.”_ _

__Giles gazed at the photographs of Cordelia and felt feelings of grief at her loss himself. It was difficult to believe that leaving the Hellmouth had actually taken Cordelia to a more dangerous life. He laid out some more photographs. Angel and Cordelia. Angel and Wesley. Angel, Wesley and Cordelia. Wesley, Gunn and Cordelia, who all had drinks in their hands and were grinning at the camera. Several clippings of Wesley from various magazines, looking very suave and happy with a pretty redhead on his arm. Gunn and Wesley, liberally splattered in some greenish goop triumphantly holding up a scaly horned head. Angel holding a baby. A very slender, very pretty girl, whom a glance at Illyria confirmed must have been Winifred Burkle, holding what appeared to be the same baby. A clipping cut from the paper, the photo of a beautiful brunette over the text: ‘Lilah Morgan promoted to Head of Department.’ It was dated two years before._ _

__“Fred did not have feelings of friendship for Lilah.” Illyria’s expression suggested her feelings weren’t any too friendly either. “But she did regret her death. It caused much grief to Wesley.”_ _

__Giles put the picture of Cordelia next to the pretty redhead which another magazine clipping identified as ‘Virginia Bryce’, then added the picture of Winifred Burkle and the clipping of Lilah Morgan._ _

__“What you looking at?” Buffy jumped up agilely to sit on the lobby counter._ _

__Giles noticed the lollipop she was sucking on and rolled his eyes. He tapped the photographs. “Wesley’s…conquests.”_ _

__“Wow. Wesley was like the total chick magnet, wasn’t he?” She tapped the picture of Virginia. “Wesley – our Wesley – dated Virginia Bryce?”_ _

__Giles looked at her in confusion. “You know her?”_ _

__“Of her. She’s really rich. I think she’s going out with some tennis player or actor or something now. She could have anyone and she chose Wesley?”_ _

__Illyria regarded her levelly. “Do you not regard Wesley as a desirable mate?”_ _

__Buffy almost choked on her lollipop before noticing Illyria’s expression and wiping the smile off her face. “Well – he was – different when we knew him. Kind of…um…not big with the girl experience. Which could be sweet too, I guess, if you like them…dorky and kinda…gay.”_ _

__“Well, he seems to have made up for lost time on reaching Los Angeles.” Giles laid out some more photographs. There was one of Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Fred, and Gunn all wearing formal wear, evidently on their way to what with normal people would probably have been the theatre but in their case had no doubt been some kind of demon killing awards ceremony._ _

__“That’s Fred?” Buffy peered closely at the picture. “She’s lovely.” Catching sight of Illyria’s expression, she added hastily. “Although the blue hair and blotches is a good look too.”_ _

__“I could look like Fred and behave exactly like her but he insists that it would be a lie. But if I look like her and have her memories and sound and act as she did, why is it still a lie?”_ _

__“Because you’re not her, Blue.” Spike appeared, an axe in his hand. “You’re the demon-god-king of the lost worlds of the fallen, remember? Fred was…Fred. Sweet girl, clever scientist, talked a lot, loved Wesley.”_ _

__“I also have feelings for Wesley,” Illyria insisted._ _

__“But that doesn’t make you, Fred, Highness. Just makes you someone who looks like her and inherited her crush when you hollowed out her body and used it as your way back to this world. Wes may be crazy but he knows the difference between reality and illusion.” Spike noticed the photographs and frowned. “How come Wes managed to pull so many hot looking birds?”_ _

__“Because he’s pretty,” Buffy explained. As Giles and Spike looked at her in disbelief, she said, “Well, he is. These days. He wasn’t back in Sunnydale, he was just kind of…a dork. But once he came to LA he got all…pretty. And there’s the accent. And the ‘feed me’ thing too. He’s really got three lines of attack there: ‘Look what big blue eyes I have and how long my eyelashes are and yet what a chiselled jaw I have. Look how thin I am and how I obviously don’t take care of myself so you should take me home and make me a sandwich right now’, and then there’s the: ‘Although I may look all pretty and helpless and in need of feeding I’m actually incredibly clever and sophisticated which is why I sound like this and oh look I can kill demons really efficiently too’.” She shrugged. “It’s an uppercut, a right hook, and a knockout punch combined.”_ _

__“I still think Lilah was only doing him for information.” Gunn peered at the picture of Lilah with a frown._ _

__“Well, she was doing him damned thoroughly for it,” Angel observed. “I could smell them all over each other.”_ _

__Buffy jumped. “Don’t sneak up on people like that!”_ _

__“I was just walking in my ordinary way. And Lilah was in love with him, people. He was the only thing she ever loved. Not saying she wouldn’t have killed him if the Senior Partners wanted her to – they pretty much owned her body and soul – but she did love him. The only time I really scared her was when she thought I was threatening Wesley.”_ _

__“Were you?” Giles asked._ _

__Angel shook his head as he gazed at the photographs. “No, just letting her know that I knew what she and Wes were doing and how it wasn’t working on their stamp collections. But I saw a look of panic there I never saw any other time, and believe me, I did a lot of threatening of Lilah over the years. I ripped the top off of her convertible and all I got was a shrug. Mention of Wesley’s name – there was fear.”_ _

__“Maybe she thought you were pulling the jealous lover thing and were going to kill her for shagging him?” Spike suggested._ _

__“No. She… I’m not a ‘jealous lover’. Wes and I have never…”_ _

__“Well, you know that, and Wes used to know it, but who’s to say Lilah knew it? Most people who see you together for five minutes think you’re at it or have been at some point. Didn’t the guy spend three months playing Captain Nemo to find out where your hellkid had dumped you? Maybe she thought Wes and you were – you know…”_ _

__Buffy nodded. “Makes sense. I mean why did you want her to know that you knew she and Wesley were an item now anyway?”_ _

__“So she knew I was in the picture.”_ _

__“Could be construed as you saying ‘back off, evil lawyer bitch, away from my Watcher’, couldn’t it? I mean I’m really fond of Giles but I don’t go around sniffing the people he’s sleeping with and then telling them I know what they’ve been doing.”_ _

__“Giles has sex?” Spike enquired in what was evidently all too genuine surprise. “Well, that is a shocker.”_ _

__“It was different,” Angel insisted. “Lilah worked for Wolfram & Hart. She was an enemy. It’s important to let your enemies know you’re aware of their position.”_ _

__“Especially when it’s underneath one of your little friends, eh?” Spike looked at the picture again. “No, scratch that. That is a woman who likes to go on top if ever I saw one.”_ _

__“He never sniffed me.” Gunn looked back at the picture of Lilah. “Fred and I were an item for weeks before Angel found out.”_ _

__“Well, Fred didn’t wear perfume and… why are we even having this conversation? No one ever used to question my relationship with Wesley before Spike turned up.”_ _

__“Are you kidding? Cordy and I were always talking about you behind your back. Come on, Angel, you turned up on the back of Wesley’s big dog bike wearing a pink crash helmet. You didn’t think we were going to talk?”_ _

__Spike sputtered in delight. “Wes made you wear the lady’s helmet? Oh, that’s a classic. I knew there was a reason why I loved that guy.”_ _

__“You used to kiss Connor when Wes was holding him. You never kissed him when I was holding him. And thank you for that, by the way.”_ _

__“Nor Fred either.” Illyria put her head on one side to observe Angel better._ _

__Angel gazed between them in disbelief. “I never even… I didn’t notice who was holding Connor. And anyway, I was more comfortable with Wes on account of him not being all vampaphobic or a girl, and girl’s get funny about personal bubbles. Whereas Wesley…”_ _

__“Was a bubble-free zone, apparently.” Buffy sucked on her lollipop again. “Well, as I think we’ve once again established that Angel was a big fat perv with sharing issues long before the whole hell dimension thing, shall we go and kill something slimy?”_ _

__“Slimy?” Giles looked up in confusion. “What?”_ _

__“Customer,” Gunn explained, holding up the axe. “Landlord of a place four blocks away. Thinks he’s got a Gravalorn in his basement on account of the tenants turning into nasty stains on the walls. I think he’s only bothered because he can’t re-let the place but for the sake of future tenants I think we have to help the dirtbag. Plus, he’ll pay us and we really need the money.”_ _

__“Well, have you researched the Gravalorn’s weaknesses and habits?” Giles demanded, reaching for the books._ _

__Spike held up his own axe. “Been there. Done that. You chop their heads off. They die. End of story.”_ _

__“Only the males can be killed by that method.”_ _

__Giles spun around in surprise as Wesley made his way cautiously down the last three steps, holding onto the banister as he did so. He was wearing jeans and a shirt that looked very expensive, but by the way his fingers kept straying to his throat, Giles suspected he would have been much happier in a suit and tie. Giles saw Buffy clamp a hand onto Angel’s arm as he made to leap across the room to assist him, holding him still. “Let him do it,” she hissed in his ear. “You’re going to scare him.”_ _

__“What was that about the males?” Gunn asked. “And should you be up? You look kind of…groggy.”_ _

__“Well, I feel how I look, but I heard you talking about Gravalorns. I had to write a paper on them during my last year at the Academy. They’re tricky. The females, as with many demonic species, are more violent and dangerous than the males, and in this instance a great deal harder to kill. While beheading will kill an adolescent female Gravalorn or a male of any age, once a female has given birth, the hormonal alteration to her body causes her DNA to mutate, giving her the ability to re-grow any limb that is severed, including the head, and to activate the latent _ingenium deterior_. The brain of the post-gravid Gravalorn, although primarily situated in the cranium between the third and fourth horns, has a kind of back up – a second brain situated in what would be the liver area in a human physiognomy that can maintain almost full strength in a headless female Gravalorn until the new head has had a chance to grow back. In males and immature females this is a redundant organ, rather similar to our appendix, suggesting the Gravalorn was once asexual until it developed its current gender delineation. The loss of the head also gives the Gravalorn a burst of wild energy that makes it even more dangerous, especially as that is the period when an adversary, thinking that he or she has defeated it, traditionally drops his or her guard. Some of my research led me to believe that each beheading and regrowth actually increases the female’s strength and that there are some fascinating accounts of mating rituals that utilize this….” Wesley seemed to notice that Spike’s eyes were glazing over and Gunn was looking at him as if he’d never seen him before. “Um – you probably just wanted the salient parts of that information?”_ _

__“The short version would be nice, Wes.” Gunn looked at Spike. “But, it’s good you told us that because genius here told me he knew all about Gravalorns and you just have to chop their head off.”_ _

__“The one er…Spike encountered in the past must have been male. They have yellowish horns, the horns of the females are more bluish in appearance, and the females are considerably larger and more liable to attack pre-emptively particularly if cornered in their lair. Oh, they have a particular dislike of vampires, by the way. Apparently because they consider them a rival prey animal that encroaches on their territory whilst not being of any nutritional value themselves.”_ _

__Buffy jumped down from the counter. “So, Gunn and I had better go in first. And we need to get the liver and the head or else we’re just laying up trouble for ourselves?”_ _

__“I’d suggest a full dismemberment to be on the safe side. The second brain isn’t always exactly in the same place although usually a sustained attack on the right rear midsection area should find it. If you wouldn’t mind bringing back the head I’d love a chance to dissect one.”_ _

__“Oh yes.” Giles looked up with interest. “I’ve never had a fresh one to examine.”_ _

__Buffy gave them a long stare. “Okay, you two are weird, but I suppose everyone has to have a hobby.”_ _

__“It is actually our job to be knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of various demons that a Slayer may encounter in the course of performing her duties,” Wesley pointed out. “And the crypto-zoological intelligence gleaned from such studies can be of as much importance on occasion as the mystical, weaponry-based or narrative aspects of research.”_ _

__Buffy looked across at Angel. “I think we need to double check that Faith’s not in torture-your-Watcher-if-he-annoys-you mode again before we pack Wesley here off to Summer Camp.”_ _

__“Am I being annoying?” Wesley blinked in confusion. “I thought I was being rather useful.”_ _

__“You’re being both,” Buffy assured him. “But that’s okay. I’m used to it because when I knew you, you were pretty much annoying all the time, and your people don’t mind because they love you anyway.”_ _

__“In a platonic way,” Angel added hastily._ _

__Giles exhaled before summoning a bright smile. “Cup of tea, Wesley?”_ _

__“Thank you.” Wesley was clearly still confused by the ‘annoying’ comment as Giles gently ushered him towards the office. “But, isn’t that what a Watcher’s supposed to do? Give them the information they need to do their job?”_ _

__Gunn gave Wesley a gentle pat on the back. “Like Cordy used to say, Wes, no one likes a smartass rogue demon hunter.”_ _

__“Oh,” Wesley grimaced. “Showing off, eh? I didn’t mean to…”_ _

__“Wes, it’s fine.” Angel darted Buffy a warning look. “The information is very useful. You sit with Giles and drink tea and…talk about cricket and…Watcher things. We’ll just go and kill the Gravalorn and then we’ll be right back, okay?”_ _

__Wesley gave him another look of bewilderment, clearly not understanding why this vampire would think that the length of their absence would be of concern to him or why he would be anything other than relieved to have them out of the building. But he said only: “Okay, why don’t we all do that then.”_ _

__Sighing, Giles put on the kettle once again and hoped that he and Wesley the newly-minted Watcher might be able to get along rather better now than they had in the past. Otherwise it was going to be a very long afternoon._ _

__***_ _

__Rupert Giles has suggested that it might be useful for me to maintain my habit of keeping a Watcher diary. A habit I have apparently been neglecting for the past few…well…years. After three days of analysis I have come to the conclusion that every one of my former associates in the company known as ‘Angel Investigations’ is – in my admittedly amateur opinion – insane. My former self – as I think of the person I was before this memory loss restored me to the person who graduated from the Watchers’ Academy – being the most insane of all of them._ _

__I also feel as if that person carjacked my body and then ran it into the ground without ever changing the oil or getting its five thousand mile service. I understand that being trapped in a hell dimension is bound to take a toll but I do resent feeling on the point of exhaustion all the time when the last thing I remember I was in pretty good physical shape – ready, in fact, to take on the training of two Slayers – and now can barely walk across a room without needing to sit down for an hour._ _

__‘ _Angel Investigations’ is a so-called ‘detective agency’ set up to ‘help the helpless’ and claiming to specialize in paranormal investigation. It also claims to be an enemy of the vampire, the demon, and the various oppressors of mankind. The members of this agency consist of no detectives of any kind, or anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of detective procedures; two vampires, Angelus (now known as Angel) and William the Bloody (now known as Spike), both ensouled, both, previous to their ensoulment, notoriously vicious serial killers, rapists, and torturers; an Old One, known as Illyria, a past god-king of the universe and past master in the art of oppressing mankind, disinterred from the Deeper Well in which the souls of those others of her kind have been – rightly – held captive for millennia, now inhabiting the body of the woman she killed, a Winifred Burkle, whose form she can apparently assume at will. Her plan to overwhelm the human world with her army of doom was apparently cancelled due to bad weather. Next up is a demon by the name of Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok clan, an anagogic denizen of the Pylean dimension with some interesting empathic powers and the ability to shatter crystal with a high note that any soprano essaying_ "Der Holle Rache kocht in meinen Herzen" _could only marvel at in envy. And, finally, Charles Gunn, a human demon-killer with a number of fake documents that prove he is a lawyer. He is in fact a lawyer of sorts, despite never having attended so much as an evening class in that discipline, due to permitting the notoriously evil law firm of Wolfram & Hart to download into his cerebral cortex the information necessary to hold his own in the human and demon courts. Apparently he knew that this was a safe thing to do because the conduit which connected the evil pan dimensional beings known as the Senior Partners to the earthly world of tort and corruption told him so. It _had_ assumed the form of a melanistic leopard at the time although I’m still not clear why this should have reassured him to the extent that it evidently did.__ _

___The above mentioned are what Buffy Summers calls ‘my people’. Buffy is now apparently not _The_ Chosen One but just one of the many Chosen Ones who have been turned from potential into actual Slayers in a plan for which she had apparently no Council backing of any kind, which has unleashed upon the world a number of untrained and probably somewhat confused activated Slayers. One of these Slayers apparently killed a number of people earlier this year and cut off William the Bloody aka Spike’s arms – they were subsequently re-attached using the resources of the aforementioned evil law firm in which we were all apparently holding key positions until recent months. Buffy did at least have the sanction of her Watcher, Rupert Giles, for this plan, although one suspects she would have gone ahead with it in any case as she appears to be a law unto herself. Knowing that there are so many ungoverned Slayers loose upon the world causes me considerable anxiety, which, oddly enough, Buffy’s frequent exhortations to ‘take a chill pill’ are doing very little to set to rest. _ _ _

___Apparently, while Buffy and her cronies are in LA, the task of training and collecting the Slayers around the world has fallen to Faith Lehane and her partner, Robin Wood, the son of a Slayer – murdered, incidentally, by William the Bloody – although without any inherited Slayer tendencies of his own. Faith, it seems, was in prison for manslaughter as a consequence of what Angel insists was a ‘confluence of events’ but which to my eye appears to have been the result of my failure to return her to the Council so that she could receive therapy and assistance after she accidentally murdered a civilian. This failure on my part apparently drove her into the arms of the Mayor of Sunnydale, a once-human villain hoping to ascend to pure demonic form. She subsequently made several attempts upon the life of Angel, and a second attempt to recapture her by the Council to take her to England was again thwarted by Yours Truly. For some reason both Buffy and Giles – of whom I would expect a more objective view – consider this clear dereliction of my duty as her Watcher to have been a heroic act of my part. Also during one of her crime sprees, Faith apparently kidnapped and tortured me. Given my catalogue of failures as her Watcher, that is perhaps her only action that I find at all explicable. She had however, at Angel’s behest, given herself up to the authorities and was paying her debt to society until my previous self – I don’t know how else to describe someone of whom I have no memory and with whom I feel almost no sense of connection – asked her to break out of prison so that the notoriously evil Angelus could be captured alive. As I was apparently responsible for his being Angelus rather than the soulled version (Angel), having decided that the best possible solution to a Los Angeles overrun by a murderous beast would be to add a vicious undead killer to the mix, perhaps my sense of responsibility was not misplaced. Since recapturing Angelus, Faith has apparently been at large and working in the cause of Good. The idea that she should perhaps return to prison to finish her sentence was greeted with such marked incredulity from all present when I voiced it that I have decided to keep my feelings to myself on the subject from now on._ _ _

___Buffy’s ‘people’ are also staying at the hotel, the Hyperion, an art deco hostelry with some fascinating architecture and an extremely chequered past. Her people consist of Rupert Giles, one of the few Watchers to survive the attack upon the Council building in London last year; Willow Rosenberg, a girl who is apparently one of the most powerful witches to ever walk the earth, although she does disguise it rather frighteningly well; and Xander Harris, a cheerful sort of fellow despite having lost an eye in the battle between good and evil, also last year, in his case the battle being with the First Evil, who apparently manifested in Sunnydale and were driven off at the last only due to the activation of the Slayers and the use of a magical amulet which helped to bury the Hellmouth. William the Bloody aka Spike was wearing the amulet at the time and was apparently burned alive… well, undead at any rate. His restoration first to ghost and then to corporeal still-soulled still-undead creature seems to be a source of some annoyance to his grandsire, Angelus, the eponymous leader of Angel Investigations._ _ _

___In short, I have woken from what feels like a very long sleep to find myself the lackey of a vampire. Apparently in my old role in the company, I was responsible for researching and formulating strategy. Something I entirely believe as no one else amongst ‘my people’ seems to have the first idea how to do either. Spike and Illyria have a worrying tendency to plunge headfirst into whatever mayhem presents itself, apparently for the hell of it. Angel – as the soulled Angelus prefers to be called – has admitted that his planning has never really evolved beyond kicking in the first door he finds and hitting anyone he finds on the other side of it. Gunn appears to be deeply divided as to which part of his personality he prefers, one day talking like a lawyer, and one day entirely like a fighter. In group situations all four tend to have a ‘rush of blood to the head’ habit that makes it seem ever more miraculous to me that they weren’t all dead and dusted years ago. Lorne – as Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok clan prefers to be known – is a pacifist, who seems to have the makings of a first class alcohol dependency problem. I’m very surprised – in view of his daily consumption of cocktails – that no one has yet suggested an intervention._ _ _

___His empathic abilities were seriously undermined when a previous colleague of ours was apparently taken over by a rogue Higher Power who cast a spell preventing him from giving correct readings, then further damaged when Angel took it upon himself to have the memories of all his associates – including mine – tampered with by mystics working for Wolfram & Hart so that the child born to him and his equally evil sire, Darla, Connor – who had apparently become psychotic as a consequence of my disastrous attempt to avert an ancient prophecy which told of Angel murdering his son – could be given a new and happier life. As a consequence of this mental tampering, Lorne’s ‘reading’ abilities have apparently been seriously undermined, and those of us who had followed Angel to Wolfram & Hart all behaved in an irrational manner as a consequence of losing the ‘anchor’ of our memories. Or were simply even more unbalanced/corruptible/psychotic than we had previously supposed and would have acted with an equal lack of self-control whether we had been ‘mind-wiped’ or not. I notice that I have a legal document, amongst the many which were cleared out of Wolfram & Hart by our remaining associates after Angel and I dived into a hell dimension, suing me for personal injury after I apparently shot a subordinate in the kneecap. How reassuring to know that even while my brain was apparently dribbling out of my ears I did manage to keep up my target practice. _ _ _

__

__Wesley put down his pen and stretched his fingers, wincing as he did so. Writing this down was definitely not helping. It was only making it clearer to him that he was in the wrong place and had somehow strayed from his true destiny so far that he didn’t now see how he could get back. He had compounded his failures as a Watcher – failures grievous enough that they had led to his being fired by the Council – by working for a vampire and then following that vampire to a position at Wolfram & Hart. There was absolutely no evidence that he had done anything for Good for the past five years. It seemed to him that he had taken leave of his senses, developed an adolescent crush on the first charismatic male to cook him breakfast and then followed his undead object of hero worship literally straight to hell. Apparently all those miserable years of being terrorized by his father hadn’t been enough for him; he had needed to spend another half a decade being terrorized by a vampire as well._ _

__Sighing, Wesley had to admit to himself that it wasn’t quite that simple. These people – humans and demons alike – had shown him a warmth and kindness that he had never known before. They did occasionally make fun of him it was true. Buffy had asked him a few hours earlier if he was sure he was getting enough starch in his shirts. Gunn mimicked his accent as if he had been doing so for years. Spike called him ‘Percy’. But there was no malice in their gentle mockery. He had been mocked enough over the years to know the difference between the kind that was spiteful and the kind that wasn’t. In the past he had often been mistaken for someone intent on grabbing leadership for himself. Not that he thought of himself as someone lacking in leadership abilities; but he had found in the past that others did not tend to fall in easily with his suggestions. His plans were invariably the most workable but he had somehow failed to acquire the knack of selling them to others; meaning he tended to be ignored while another louder and less intelligent strategy would win the vote. When they had been given problems to solve at the Academy, because he was usually the first to come up with a workable plan or to find a flaw in someone else’s plan, he had always felt the rough side of alpha male aggression, people telling him they had no intention of letting him order them around when he had intended no such thing. He had feared the same thing might result with his allotted Slayer although he had hoped that her gender and comparatively tender years would give him a glow of authority that might carry him through. But here when he suggested that a certain strategy might be the right one, people didn’t respond to him with either aggression or scorn, they nodded as if he was invariably the person with the workable solution._ _

__He still seemed to be giving them rather more information than they wanted. Gunn had said ‘Cut to the chase, Wes!’ with more than a hint of impatience earlier, while Spike now prefaced almost every question with ‘And before you ask, yes, I want the short version’, but there was an…affection there that he found a little bewildering and seductively warming. They teased him the way he had seen family members tease one another – in other families, of course. His father scolded, berated, sneered, punished. He didn’t tease. Gunn and Spike teased him. Angel fluttered anxiously, constantly reassuring Wesley that he would return soon or that he shouldn’t be upset by their words, despite the fact that Wesley always felt safer when the vampires were absent and had managed to work out for himself after the first couple of emotional winces that Gunn and Spike were actually fond of him and didn’t mean him any harm._ _

__Illyria had suggested that, as his memories of Fred were now no longer an issue between them, they should have sexual intercourse, and had seemed entirely uncomprehending of why he had backed away so hastily._ _

__“Watcher, love,” Spike had observed while taking her by the arm and moving her gently away. “They don’t put out for demons.”_ _

__“I am no mere demon. I am – ”_ _

__“The god king of the universe. Yes, your mightiness, I know that, but it’s still not a selling point to a guy whose been brought up to marry a nice girl called Caroline and settle down with her in Shropshire to breed Cocker spaniels…”_ _

__Although he’d been affronted by Spike’s words and ready to take offence, he’d realized very quickly that the vampire had actually meant it kindly; a tactful ‘it’s not you, it’s him’ to the rejected party, while at the same time having rescued Wesley from a situation that at the very least was embarrassing._ _

__He had looked at photographs of the people he’d forgotten and events that were locked away in his memory. Fred looked much prettier than any girl he would have expected to show an interest in him but he couldn’t say he felt any stirrings of love for her. She looked like…a pretty girl in a photograph. Winifred Burkle. Even saying the name aloud didn’t make her seem any more real. Cordelia was a very striking-looking woman as well. He had gazed at pictures of himself with these women, with Angel, with Gunn, with Lorne, with all of them together, a picture of himself holding a baby that he had later lost, and felt as if he were looking at a complete stranger. This was not his life. These were not his memories. He could not find himself in this place. Or else, perhaps, he was too afraid to look._ _

__As he familiarised himself with the office computer, he had looked up on the internet a few random quotes about memory, as if waiting for some light from above to illuminate his options and tell him what he should do next. The first quote had seemed promising:_ _

___Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door._ _ _

__Well, he knew all about insignificance, so that was definitely a vote for the ‘yes, you want your memories back’ box. But the next was not so positive:_ _

___The leaves of memory seemed to make  
A mournful rustling in the dark. _ _ _

__He wasn’t very enthralled by the idea of being given back five years of mournful rustlings. “One all,” Wesley murmured. “All right then, the next one shall be the decider.” He clicked on the next ‘memory quote’ that came up._ _

___Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food._ _ _

__Grimacing, he sat back and clicked off the quote site. So much for advice from On High. “Well, that’s definitely a ‘no’ then.”_ _

__Given his physical condition, he was forced to spend a great deal of time resting, but had been given a box of his old diaries to read so that he could think of it as research and presumably be less whiney and annoying to everyone else about how fed up he was with not being able to walk across a room without needing to sit down and recuperate._ _

__Word had evidently gone out that Angel Investigations were back in their old quarters as there had been a steady – if not flood, at least trickle of new cases. Wesley had noticed in some dismay that the approach from Spike, Angel, and on occasion Buffy and Gunn, was to pick up a sword first and think later. Several times he’d staggered down from yet another of those annoying rests his body kept insisting that he took to find them almost out of the door with no kind of a plan to deal with what they were facing and sometimes only the haziest idea of the best way to neutralize it. He’d tried to impress upon Gunn that they should plan first and act later but they’d all looked at him blankly when he said that. Illyria simply tossed her blue hair back and said that the demons of this world would tremble before her wrath, while Angel looked like a small boy given a detention when he had to slope back for a briefing before setting off on a demon-killing spree. Wesley had managed to elicit a half-hearted sort of promise that they would at least talk to Giles about what they were facing before marching off to kill it but had not yet been able to persuade them to wake him up so he could research the problem first._ _

__The thought of them all going off and getting themselves slaughtered because Giles and Willow were researching magic spells to restore his memory and he was asleep in bed really worried him, and he’d tried to just catnap in the office, close to the books, so they couldn’t tiptoe across the lobby without waking him. Luckily, none of them had any idea of what covert meant, and had yet to manage removing a sword or axe from the weapons cabinet without making enough noise to wake the dead, let alone a restless watcher. So he had caught them twice and managed to prevent them from taking a flame thrower to deal with a flame-eating Vikoresh serpent demon – an approach on their part that would have super-charged its powers to the point where it could have belched them all to a cinder – and taking Gunn into a Thraxian Lelmath situation without any horehound to hand. Even the habitually confident attorney-come-demon-killer had been a little subdued by the accounts Wesley had read to him of humans dying in horrible agony from a scratch from its highly poisonous talons. He was still getting phrases like ‘Don’tcha just hate a smug knowitall Watcher?’ (Buffy) ‘You really are an annoying little tit sometimes, Wes, mate’ (Spike) and ‘Okay, I get it! Enough about the internal bleeding!’ (Gunn) thrown at him on a regular basis. But they were still alive and he was starting to realize that he might have played a rather larger part in that process in the past than he’d initially realized._ _

__He’d pretty much managed to annex what seemed to be his old office and would have enjoyed having so many new books to read had it not been for the way he kept falling asleep over them. Willow would wake him gently from such slumbers with a cup of tea but Buffy could hardly have been less sympathetic when she found him:_ _

__“Yes, Wes, we know it must be frustrating. All those incredibly boring old books to read and you can’t stay in research mode for forty eight hours straight with no sleep like you used to. My heart bleeds. Now, do as I told you three hours ago and go and take a nap. Otherwise you’re just going to be cranky later and we won’t let you stay up and watch TV.” Buffy positively yanked a very interesting volume of _Deux Daemonicus di Regnum Infernus ___out of his hands while he could only gape at her in disbelief._ _

___“But I was reading ”_ _ _

___“Eight months in a hell dimension ringing any bells with you?”_ _ _

___“No, actually. Due to the amnesia, it isn’t.”_ _ _

___“Don’t get snippy with me, stuffy Watcher Guy.”_ _ _

___“Well, Giles may permit you to treat him like a backward ten year old but I have no intention –”_ _ _

___“Giles doesn’t _act_ like a backward ten year old. Which is why I almost never have to grab Giles by the scruff of the neck and physically drag him –”_ _ _

___Wesley backed up hastily. “By the powers vested in me by the –”_ _ _

___“You don’t have any powers vested in you by the Council, remember? You’re just another rogue demon hunter now, and, guess what? I have special dispensation to use my super Slayer Strength to put those over my knee and _spank them_.”_ _ _

___Wesley gaped at her in horror. “You wouldn’t!”_ _ _

___“Are you nuts?” Xander demanded. “You don’t _want_ her to?”_ _ _

___“Of course, I don’t want…” Wesley realized that Xander was now in the room and would therefore save him from Buffy and exhaled in relief. Snatching another breath, he said, “Buffy, I really think we can discuss this reasonably, like sensible adults.”_ _ _

___“Well, I think you need to go to bed right now and this time without reading under the covers with a flashlight like a six year old.”_ _ _

___“I was not ‘reading under the covers’, I was just making a few notes.”_ _ _

___“I’ll tell Angel.” She opened the door and stood there with her arms folded. “He _will_ carry you up to bed and undress you. He has vampire strength _and_ a frustrated parenting complex. If you get away without him reading you a story, it will be a miracle.”_ _ _

___That was the point where he decided that sometimes discretion was the better part of valour and that there was a great deal to be said for the art of compromise. “I’ll just go and rest for a few hours then. Upstairs. But when I come back down again I expect that book to be where I left it and not to have any peanut butter on it.”_ _ _

___Buffy held the door open for him. “What about jelly?”_ _ _

___“That isn’t even slightly funny,” he assured her._ _ _

___“I was right not to want you for my Watcher.”_ _ _

___“And I’m understanding more and more why I fled from Sunnydale to LA…”_ _ _

___Only as he was walking across the lobby did he hear her say to Xander: “I love him really. But I don’t think it’s good policy to spoil your ex-Watchers. It just makes them needy.”_ _ _

___“I can’t believe you were going to spank Wesley when you’ve never once offered to spank me. That’s just blatant favouritism.”_ _ _

___“What can I say? He has the earnest blue eyes. They earn him extra spanking privileges.”_ _ _

___“And he doesn’t even know how lucky he is…” Xander sighed sadly._ _ _

___Wesley positively sprinted up to bed. It was galling that Buffy’s insistence on him resting had been proven correct by the way he had been asleep three seconds after his head hit the pillow and hadn’t woken up for six hours straight. It was so typical of her too, to not say a single ‘I told you so’ when he stumbled blearily downstairs, but to have kept some food hot for him and to hand him a cup of tea, brewed in the pot, and a pen and a piece of paper so he could go back to his research, all without a murmur of criticism. He had been having a very nice time amongst his books, trying to plot the hibernation cycles of the extremely vicious Traklar demon – two of whom Angel Investigations had recently sliced and diced in the local sewers – when Xander and Spike had insisted on dragging him into the residents’ lounge to watch a particularly idiotic film which, for all its obvious stupidity, had made him laugh out loud several times._ _ _

___“You see, Wes.” Gunn handed him a beer without asking if he wanted one, while elbowing his way onto a couch designed to hold three that was already accommodating that number of people. “We teach Illyria how to evolve from an Old One into someone with normal human empathy and then we do it with the English people we know as well.”_ _ _

___“Do please leave me out of your rehabilitation plans,” Giles told him. “I don’t care how many beers you make me drink, this film is never going to be anything other than pointless and stupid.”_ _ _

___“It’s supposed to be pointless and stupid,” Xander insisted. “Some things are just meant to be – like Spike.”_ _ _

___“I don’t have a chip these days,” Spike reminded him._ _ _

___Xander looked at him sideways. “But you have a soul.”_ _ _

___“So did Ted Bundy.”_ _ _

___Xander said, “Change places, Wesley. You sit next to Spike, and I’ll sit over here.”_ _ _

___He found himself being bodily shoved next to a vampire; his heart automatically beginning to race at the close proximity. Spike offered him a bag of crisps with a regretful expression on his face that suggested he knew all about the fear and wasn’t going to say a word about it. Wesley took a handful and managed to say ‘thank you’ without sounding as scared as they both knew he was._ _ _

___“Must take some getting used to,” Spike said after a few minutes, undercover of Gunn and Xander having a spirited conversation about sport, which involved them leaning back and shouting behind Spike and Wesley. The thought of switching down the volume on the TV, or pausing the video didn’t seem to occur to them. Wesley noticed that all Xander had done by moving was change Spike from his right side to his left. He hoped that he didn’t have body odour that no one was telling him about, and then realized that Xander was just too drunk to reason logically. He seemed as confused as Wesley was by still having Spike next to him._ _ _

___“I said it must take some getting used to.”_ _ _

___“What?” Wesley looked at Spike warily._ _ _

___“This. Us. You. Not being…who you remember being.”_ _ _

___“But I am who I remember being, I just don’t remember being who I don’t…remember being.”_ _ _

___Spike thought for a moment, nodded, then said, “No, you lost me. Never mind. Just saying, we all know it isn’t easy for you.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked across at Angel who was sitting slumped in an overstuffed armchair morosely sipping from a beaker of blood. Every now and then he would look across at Buffy and sigh or look across at Wesley and sigh or look across at Giles and wince. Presumably that was a sigh for what might have been, a sigh for what had been, and a wince of unalleviated guilt. Wesley hated the way he found it so easy to feel sorry for Angel. It was as if there was a switch inside him that kicked in automatically. He could feel himself starting to get to know the vampire’s moods; aware of him and the way he was feeling even when he was hardly looking in his direction. Presumably that was what had happened last time; he’d ended up joined to one of the undead by an invisible psychic thread. He definitely didn’t want that happening twice. Sighing himself, he said, “I don’t suppose it’s very easy for the rest of you either.”_ _ _

___“No, it isn’t. Especially for old brood-for-his-country.”_ _ _

___“Hey.” Gunn nudged him gently in the ribs. “We trained you up once, we can do it again.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked at him sideways. “How – kind of you.”_ _ _

___Gunn grinned at him. “No sweat, English. You want a game of Risk later? It’ll be just like old times – I always win, you always lose.”_ _ _

___“I have research to do.” Wesley sounded as stuffy as he possibly could, but couldn’t help grinning._ _ _

___“You just know that I’ll kick your ass.”_ _ _

___Spike offered him the crisps again. “Did I mention that you owe me fifty bucks?”_ _ _

___“Sorry, it must have slipped my mind.” Wesley cautiously took a handful, relieved that his heartrate had returned to normal again. Spike seemed to be aware of it too, giving him a smile of approval._ _ _

___“Did I say fifty? I meant…”_ _ _

___“Don’t even try it,” Gunn warned the blond vampire._ _ _

___“Do you think we should tell him about his wife? And the six kids?”_ _ _

___“Stop abusing his trust, Spike,” Angel warned._ _ _

___“Sorry, I was forgetting that’s your job.”_ _ _

___There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence and Spike grimaced. “Sorry, mate. Couldn’t resist. Kind of wish I had now though if…”_ _ _

___But Angel had already got up and walked out. It was only with the most supreme effort of self control that Wesley stopped himself from him following him. But he couldn’t help watching him walk out of the room, a black cloud of misery permeating the whole hotel. Gunn looked at Wesley and then winced. “Sorry. I’m just used to you being the guy who… I’ll go and talk to him.”_ _ _

___“No, leave him.” Spike leant across Wesley to catch Gunn’s arm. “I’ll talk to him later. When he’s less likely to punch my teeth down my throat.”_ _ _

___“Spike, there’s never a time when Angel doesn’t want to punch your teeth down your throat.”_ _ _

___Xander looked up. “Why am I not surprised?”_ _ _

___“He isn’t sleeping.” Gunn reached for another beer. “It’s making him cranky.”_ _ _

___“Too much caffeine in his blood?” Xander enquired._ _ _

___Spike jerked his head at Wesley. “Doesn’t have his blanky, does he?” He leant forward and Wesley flinched instinctively as the vampire put his ear to Wesley’s chest and listened intently for a moment. He straightened up with a shrug and snaffled the beer from Gunn as he did so, lifting it out of reach. “Doesn’t sound that special to me. The usual tick-tock. And get your own, you’re nearest the crate.”_ _ _

___Gunn reluctantly did so while Wesley automatically put a hand across his heart; trying to feel that rhythm Spike had mentioned. After a few minutes when the attention had moved from him, he found himself getting up and going out into the lobby, not sure what he was planning to say to Angel when he found him, just feeling compelled to say something. There was no sign of him in the lobby and after a glance into his office, he tried the garden. Angel was standing on the balcony, looking tragic._ _ _

___“Are you okay?” Wesley asked quietly._ _ _

___Angel nodded. “Fine. Are you? Do you need anything?”_ _ _

___“No.” Wesley stood there awkwardly for a moment. “Well, I just wanted to know if you were… And I see you are, so I’ll…”_ _ _

___“Wes…?”_ _ _

___His name said like that… There was a power to it that scared him. He felt a shiver inside that wasn’t exactly fear and wasn’t exactly warmth, but a strange combination of the two. When they were alone together like this, he could feel it, the connection between them. That was when he knew that they had been friends, not just because of photographs and diaries and the events people kept describing to him, but because on some basic level he could still sense it. He didn’t know if it was just an awareness of all that sense of their connection from Angel, or if he just remembered it on a level so deep that it side-stepped memory. It made him shiver inside because he knew it could never have been easy, or safe, or simple. It must always have been as intense and painful as first love. Except at least with a love affair there was some kind of path one could take, a way of moving forward towards marriage or away from it, towards children or divorce, or chilly indifference. But this relationship must have been like this all the time. Nowhere for it to go. All this overpowering emotion trapped in the fragile membrane of a friendship that couldn’t evolve except into something even more intense, even more terrifying._ _ _

___Wesley swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I don’t remember.”_ _ _

___“I’m not sure that I am.” Angel gazed into the darkness and Wesley wondered what it must be like never to feel the sun on your skin; to never stand on a mountain and watch the sun come up. Liam had been born in rural Ireland, close to nature. In between the whores and the taverns, the fights and the drinking, there must have been moments when he walked in the light, breathed in the scent of wet grass. “There were a lot of bad times.”_ _ _

___“I expect there were some good times too.” Wesley risked another look at him._ _ _

___“Yes.” Angel half-smiled. “Some damned good times. And take it from someone damned when I say that.”_ _ _

___He wished it didn’t hurt to think of Angel as ‘damned’. Did that mean there could only ever be a hell dimension for him? He seemed to want to do Good. Got up every day and looked for good he could do, ways he could help his fellow man. Except they weren’t his fellow man, of course, which made it all the more extraordinary that so much of his time was devoted to trying to help them. He could have just retired to a basement somewhere, filled with beautiful things – he seemed to have a genuine appreciation for art and literature – and lived out his eternity quietly. The fear was still there, a constant with him, especially when they stood close together. He knew Angel must be able to hear it, his accelerated heart rate, the beat that had apparently comforted him in the hell dimension he’d dived into to try to save Wesley’s life. Not this Wesley, of course, the one he didn’t remember being now; the one who would remember Angel. The one Angel didn’t want him to be again in case it hurt him too much. It was so frighteningly easy to think of Angel as someone noble and better than other men. He already had to fight quite hard to remind himself of the many crimes of Angelus._ _ _

___His instincts remembered it though; they knew he was standing next to something that fed on human blood; that hungered for it, hot from the jugular. He wondered if a whisky bottle flinched when an alcoholic walked by. Or perhaps it yearned to be drunk. Perhaps humans did too. Perhaps a vampire was something dreamt up by a human with a deathwish. It was supposed to be an almost painless death, wasn’t it?_ _ _

___He had scars on his body from events he didn’t remember. Battles fought in the lost time between reaching Sunnydale and waking up in that bed upstairs. Some of them were bite marks that matched Angel’s fangs. He wondered how it had felt, the teeth going in, piercing his skin, the blood being sucked from him. Had it hurt? Had he whimpered? Had he liked it? He swallowed, wishing his heart would stop racing like that, hurting Angel with every accelerated beat. But how many men could remain calm when standing besides a being that had drunk his blood, who knew how he tasted on the tongue, who had relied on what flowed through his veins to stay alive? Did he smell like food to Angel? He found his voice with difficulty._ _ _

___“I’m thinking…I might stay here – if I could be useful. You don’t seem to have anyone else who can do research for you.”_ _ _

___Angel looked at him in surprise. “You don’t need to feel obligated, Wes. You don’t know any of us. And it’s not like the Watchers’ Council don’t need you too.”_ _ _

___“I know, but…” Wesley snatched a breath. “You just all go off…half-cocked. Someone comes in with a case and you go charging off to deal with it without even…”_ _ _

___“Gunn has lots of demon law in his brain.”_ _ _

___“Yes, and I’m sure he could negotiate a child custody case admirably for a Morlath in any of the three languages it speaks, but for some reason Wolfram & Hart didn’t seem to feel it prudent to give him the information necessary to help him kill some of their best paying clients.”_ _ _

___“You’re snippy again.” Angel smiled. “I missed that. You’d just got it back when…” His face fell._ _ _

___Wesley swallowed. “When I lost my memory.”_ _ _

___“Your memory’s taken quite a beating these past few years, it probably decided to just…” Angel shrugged._ _ _

___Abruptly Wesley rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm. “Giles told me that you had to drink from me in that hell dimension. That there was no other way for us to stay alive. Is this…?”_ _ _

___Angel carefully didn’t touch him. “Yes. That’s from my teeth. You fed me.” He nodded at a scar on the inside of Wesley’s forearm. “That one too.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked down at the cut. “It doesn’t look like a bite.”_ _ _

___“No. You cut yourself with a knife.”_ _ _

___Wesley shivered. “Like some acolyte with a cult leader.”_ _ _

___“Like a friend who was trying to save my sanity.” Angel gazed at him intently. “We hadn’t seen each other for months. The last time we’d had a conversation it consisted of you unable to speak because of a slashed trachea and me screaming at you that you were a dead man as they dragged me off you. The next time I saw you, you were feeding me your own blood.”_ _ _

___“It was my fault.” As always when confronted with another of the mistakes of his previous version he felt like a cat in a thunderstorm, hair prickling in indignation; hating the man he’d been for saddling him with all this inherited guilt. No wonder he was starting to know how Angel must have felt when he woke up from his century long killing spree with that soul. “I can justify stealing your son and betraying your trust, as it was to save a baby from being killed by a vampire. What I can’t ever justify is my hopeless incompetence in doing so. I didn’t even get him from this hotel to my flat before I’d lost him. How on earth did I think I was going to keep him safe from all the various cults that were after him? And I pride myself on my planning.”_ _ _

___Angel frowned. “Wes, you’d had about two hours sleep in the previous three days. You were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A beaten up woman staggers up to you and tells you she needs your help…”_ _ _

___“It was inexcusable. We both know that. If you’re going to betray a friend – even as an act of loyalty – you need to be competent about it. I should have told Gunn. With two of us protecting him, there might have been at least a chance of keeping Connor safe.”_ _ _

___“If Gunn had been with you when you took my son I would have killed him. I nearly killed you and I… Well, I liked you better than I liked him. Not that I don’t like him. I do. He’s my friend and a good man, but you and me…”_ _ _

___“I know.” Wesley winced. “I don’t, of course. But I sometimes… I can sort of guess. Too much damage in too small a space. All those incestuous romances, those incestuous friendships.”_ _ _

___“If you’re saying it was intense, then, yes, it was intense. But you can’t shy away from deep emotion just because it’s messy and complicated and makes you hurt inside.”_ _ _

___“Why can’t you?” Wesley countered._ _ _

___Angel sighed. “I don’t know. Because one way of knowing you’re alive is…”_ _ _

___“How much you hurt?”_ _ _

___“You’re right. You don’t need that crap back, Wes. Cordy and Fred and Connor and the whole damned soap opera. Especially Fred. Two and a half years of being in love with a woman only to have her slip through your fingers after a kiss…” Angel closed his eyes. “I remember how it was with Cordy. I still wake up smelling her perfume. She was so warm and real and…alive. And she was already gone.”_ _ _

___Wesley snatched a breath. “But at least you have it. You had the grand passion. The romance of a lifetime.”_ _ _

___“I already had that with Buffy. With Cordy I don’t even know if… I don’t know for how long she was…Cordy. When the change started. How much I was manipulated. There was nothing about what the Powers let happen to Cordelia that was good. And Fred died a horrible painful death in your arms, Wes, and there was nothing you could do to save her. And then her corpse twitched and her murderer looked you in the eyes and told you she was Illyria now. Every time you looked at Illyria you had to look at Fred. You were clinging to sanity by a fingernail when you got all the memories of Connor back and then you were…”_ _ _

___“Crazier than a sackful of monkeys?” Wesley enquired conversationally._ _ _

___“Yeah. Probably. I didn’t want to see it. I kept telling myself that if I just treated you as if you were the Wes I knew, you’d claw your way back to being him. Maybe you would have done too, but it sure as hell didn’t help when Illyria decided the best way to solve the problem of Fred’s parents visiting would be to look and sound just like her then ask if you wanted to have sex with her.”_ _ _

___Wesley flinched inside. “I can imagine that was… Actually, I can’t… I can’t imagine how it feels to have my heart broken into pieces by the loss of a woman I don’t remember. I’ve looked at the photographs and I can see she was beautiful and…kind, but I’ve never lost anyone I love. I’m not sure I’ve ever loved. There were friends at school I was fond of. But I’ve never… I don’t think one can love in isolation. There has to be some kind of reciprocity going on. I’ve never… No one’s ever…” _Loved me_._ _ _

___“I know.” Angel always seem to hear the words he hadn’t said aloud as well as the ones he had. “You were so…raw. I know you don’t feel that way. You feel all grown up and ready to face the world, well-prepared because you’ve read all the books and you can cross reference like a superhero, but you and Cordy were so…young. I just wanted to keep you safe. You can’t imagine how much I wanted that.”_ _ _

___“I wish I remembered her.”_ _ _

___“I wish you did too. You loved each other. You were the brother and sister the other one had never had. Strange, really, because you had a crush at first sight, but that just…dissolved overnight and suddenly you were twins. With Fred it was the other way round. You and Gunn were both so protective of her. I thought you saw her as a little sister and I think for a while you did. She was kind of crazy and so sweet and brave and…did I mention the crazy part? You wanted to keep her safe. And then you both fell in love with her. And…” He shook his head. “Maybe if you’d been out in the world a little more before it happened it wouldn’t have been so bad. But she became everything to you. She was the woman on the pedestal, the woman of your dreams, and she wasn’t an illusion; she was real and warm and she wanted you. She was… Well, I know what it’s like to have the woman who is your idea of perfection look you in the eyes and tell you that she loves you. I had it with Buffy. I had it with Cordy at the very end. When she kissed me I knew she loved me too. And then I lost her. We both lost the women we loved.”_ _ _

___“Would you choose to be without those memories?”_ _ _

___“No. But maybe I’d choose to be without the pain. Except they’re inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.”_ _ _

___Wesley felt a little stung. “You don’t think I can handle the pain?”_ _ _

___Angel gazed at him intently. “I know you can’t handle the pain. I watched it drive you crazy. I don’t want to see that happen again.”_ _ _

___“So, I give up all the most meaningful and intense experiences of my life and I…”_ _ _

___“Don’t hurt so much. Wes, there weren’t any happy endings for the guy you were. You came to LA and you and Cordelia bonded like brother and sister. And she died. She didn’t just die either. First, she turned against you, then she ascended to a higher plane, then she came back with a monster inside her. Then she woke up and we thought we had her back again. But she was just saying goodbye. What’s the point in remembering the good times when all they led to was us burying her? And the same goes for Fred. You fell in love with her and she chose someone else and then she chose you and you had – I don’t know – a day? There wasn’t even time for you to consummate your feelings for each other. And then she died in your arms and her soul was consumed by Illyria and maybe something of Fred is still in there but you’re the one who told me she was gone forever, that you can’t be half alive, that who Fred is doesn’t exist any more, that there’s only Illyria now.”_ _ _

___“Isn’t that what I am?” Wesley asked sadly._ _ _

___“What?”_ _ _

___“Half alive.”_ _ _

___Angel set his teeth. “It’s better than being half dead, which is what you were before. Do you want to be crazy again? Do you want to have all those memories back that drove you to the brink before?”_ _ _

___“Do you think I would have been insane forever?”_ _ _

___“I don’t know. I just know you’re saner now.”_ _ _

___“Because I’m not who I am.”_ _ _

___“Because you’re not who you were.”_ _ _

___There was a long silence before Wesley said: “Isn’t there anything worth remembering? Nothing good at all?”_ _ _

___Angel bowed his head. “I can’t… All the times I remember you being happy it was about something that can’t happen any more. And I’m not the right person to ask. We both know what I… We both know that I miss the man you were. But I gave up Connor so he could have a better life and I’m not going to…” He shrugged. “Go back with Giles. Be Faith’s Watcher. You don’t need a bunch of demon-killing weirdos in your life, Wes, trust me. Lorne thinks I’m not on my path any more anyway. Maybe there’s still time for you get back onto yours.”_ _ _

___Wesley let the vampire go. The fear going with him. Angel walked back into the hotel and at once the balcony felt like a safer place. It also felt so much colder._ _ _

___“But what if it isn’t Faith I was meant to be a Watcher for?” he breathed to himself. “What if I wasn’t intended to be the person I thought I was going to be when I got off that plane. What if I was meant to come to LA and be the Watcher to a bunch of demon-killing weirdos? What if you’re my path?”_ _ _

___Not knowing what else to do, he stood on the balcony and watched the clouds scudding in front of a moon half-hidden by a blanket of smog. He found himself thinking about the moonlight in Ireland. How different it must have been for the man Angel had once been. He wondered if he missed the air and the light and the green and the silence. He wondered if he missed the heartbeat that had once kept time in his chest._ _ _

___***_ _ _

___Wesley knew they thought it was ‘fussing’ but the fact remained that they were reckless and often unprepared and he frankly thought that Giles had been a Watcher for too long and had reached the ‘let them juggle knives’ stage because he was, in his opinion, very lax about making them going through their pre-mission checklist. There had been far too many occasions of late when Angel’s approach to demon-killing missions had reminded him of that old quote: “An Englishman thinks seated; a Frenchman standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards”. Not that Gunn was any better, for all his lack of Irish blood._ _ _

___Wearily he asked again: “Gunn, are you sure you’re carrying the nails and eucalyptus leaves? You really can’t go up against a Shakoranak without some iron.”_ _ _

___Gunn held up his axe. “This is iron.”_ _ _

___“And if it gets knocked out of your hand in the heat of battle?”_ _ _

___Sighing, Gunn held up the pouch Wesley had insisted he tie around his neck. “You are such a worrywart, you know that?”_ _ _

___“Well, excuse me for not wanting to see you all dead.”_ _ _

___Gunn turned to Buffy, who was holding a crossbow and rolling her eyes. “Did Giles ever fuss like this?”_ _ _

___“No. I _trained_ my Watcher. He’s all housebroken and everything.”_ _ _

___Giles looked up at her over his spectacles. “I beg your pardon?”_ _ _

___“You don’t fuss every time I go on a mission the way Wesley does. You just – give me the salient information and send me on my way. No fussing.”_ _ _

___“I don’t fuss,” Wesley protested. “I just – double check.”_ _ _

___“And triple check, quadruple check, and whatever comes after that check,” Buffy retorted. “You’ve elevated being anally retentive to a whole new level.”_ _ _

___“Lay off my Watcher,” Spike told her. “Go pick on your own. He’s used to it.”_ _ _

___“Since when was Wesley your Watcher?” Angel demanded. “He’s not your Watcher.”_ _ _

___“Okay, if you want to quibble, he’s not technically being paid by the Council to be my Watcher, on account of him not working for the Council and me not being a Slayer. But he’s functioning as my Watcher.”_ _ _

___“Our Watcher,” Gunn pointed out._ _ _

___“And my substitute back up annoying spare Watcher,” Buffy added._ _ _

___“He’s doing his best,” said Angel defensively. “You’ve never given Wes a chance.”_ _ _

___“Angel, I’m joking.” She looked at him in disbelief. “How can you not know I’m joking? Wes, you know I love you, right?”_ _ _

___He gaped at her, then reached for the place where his tie should be. “Well…”_ _ _

___“Oh, come on, did _no one_ know I was joking?”_ _ _

___“I knew,” Giles assured her._ _ _

___Buffy turned on Angel. “What do you mean I’ve never given him a chance?”_ _ _

___“Back in Sunnydale the first time around, I’m just saying, maybe if you’d shown a bit more patience, been a bit more reasonable – “_ _ _

___“Okay, let’s stop this conversation right there, shall we?” Wesley held up a hand, pleased with the way that had come out so crisp and authoritative. “For those of you with very short attention spans – which apparently includes everyone in this room who isn’t Giles or myself – you are going to clear out a nest of Shakoranak demons, otherwise know as spine-splitters due to their extremely nasty fighting habits. They are violently allergic to iron, which is lethal to them, so exchanging your wooden stake for something that might actually kill them would probably be a good idea at this juncture, Spike. They are also disorientated by eucalyptus leaves, hence the small bags handed out to you earlier that were prepared by Willow. Illyria, you may be a god-king of the fallen worlds but you also have a spine so please put on one of the bags. Thank you. Angel, remember that they have a particularly vicious retractable talon that is long, strong and sharp enough to behead as well as impale. If you see it move its wrist thusly –” Wesley demonstrated, “then the Shakoranak is probably about to unleash its talon. Don’t try to duck under it; its reflexes are terrifyingly fast, and it could easily behead you. Better to let it impale you if no other option is open to you. Buffy and Gunn, I suggest you wear the vests I left out for you earlier. The talon when fully extended is nearly two feet long and would go straight through you if you didn’t get out of its way in time. Is everyone clear about their fighting patterns or would you like me to go through it again?”_ _ _

___“Oh please,” Buffy muttered. “I could have taught a gerbil to foxtrot faster.”_ _ _

___“We remember the spine splitter dance steps,” Spike assured him. “Right flank, left flank, aerial assault. Watch out for the ones in the floorboards. We’ve got you.”_ _ _

___“Can we go now?” Gunn pleaded._ _ _

___Wesley fought down the urge to smirk, maintaining a straight face as he asked earnestly, “Are you sure you don’t want me to run through it again? Oh and do remember to…go before you go, won’t you?”_ _ _

___“I’m not loving you so much now,” Buffy admitted. “In fact the old urge to hit you quite hard seems to be trying to break through.”_ _ _

___“Fight it,” Wesley advised._ _ _

___“Stop picking on Wesley,” Angel told her firmly before adding quickly as he backed away towards the exit and escape, “But we really don’t need any more preparation, Wesley, in fact I think we should just…go.” With Illyria casting a last unblinking look of great intensity before she left, the demon-killers darted into the night world outside._ _ _

___Giles waited until they had passed through the doors of the Hyperion before raising an eyebrow at Wesley. “Do you think they know you’re winding them up?”_ _ _

___Wesley smirked and reached for his tea. “I don’t know what you mean.”_ _ _

___“Wesley, I knew you when you were genuinely at your most pompous and annoying and even then you never asked your Slayer if she needed to visit the bathroom before Slaying commenced.”_ _ _

___Wesley sighed and looked after them. “It doesn’t feel right – waiting here. I should be with them.”_ _ _

___“And I’m sure if there’s a case involving demons that tire easily and which are situated no more than a hundred yards from the hotel, you will be.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked down at himself in disgust. “I’d really like to punch the idiot on the nose who hijacked my body for the past five years.”_ _ _

___“That’s an idiot who happens to be a dearly loved friend of most of the people in this hotel, Wesley,” Giles reminded him._ _ _

___“I can’t imagine why. He seemed to have – _I_ seemed to have – elevated incompetence to an art form.”_ _ _

___Giles raised an eyebrow. “Well, then clearly they just loved you for your looks. I’m sure their affection for you had nothing whatsoever to do with you fighting demons alongside them, you risking your life for theirs, for the world, for the common good, or for the connection you all have because of shared experiences.”_ _ _

___Wesley darted him a glance. “Are you saying, I should…?”_ _ _

___Giles shrugged and reached for another reference book. “You’ve made your decision. You don’t want your memories back. I understand. Everyone understands.”_ _ _

___They researched for a while in silence but although Wesley tried to keep his mind on the text in front of him, those last words from Giles kept going through his head. No criticism had been offered, it was true, and yet he felt as if it had; a silent critique of his cowardice in not being prepared to accept what he truly was._ _ _

___ _

___Giles had come to the conclusions many days since that he and Wesley had been very remiss in not keeping in touch better when the man had been in Los Angeles. Not only would he have been able to provide advice and assistance on the occasions when the man had clearly needed it, but they also had many books in their individual libraries that the other one did not possess, and they could have pooled resources. At the moment, for instance, he was in the process of translating a book of Wesley’s that dealt with gateways to demon dimensions and how to both open and close them that would have been very useful when they’d been dealing with Glory. It was written in Akkadian, and it was almost like being back in university again to sit here quietly translating cuneiform while sipping at a welcome cup of tea and enjoying the occasional nibble of a chocolate digestive._ _ _

___“I like being sane,” Wesley said out of the blue. “I like being able to tie my own shoelaces and not crying all the time. And how useful could I possibly be as some neurotic weirdo who can’t go to the bathroom without a vampire holding his hand?”_ _ _

___He had evidently been processing what he perceived to be Giles’ criticism of his decision for the past twenty minutes. Giles bookmarked the page of the book he was reading with a torn off strip of paper. “I think you were managing the bathroom pretty well, actually. But I do see your point.”_ _ _

___“I know you can’t stay here forever and these people… well, let’s face it, strategising doesn’t appear to be a strong point.”_ _ _

___Giles bent his head to conceal a smile. “So, were you thinking of staying?”_ _ _

___“Well…yes. It’s not that I don’t want to do my duty, Giles.” Wesley unconsciously sat up straighter and adjusted his jacket, reaching again for a tie that wasn’t there. “I would like nothing better than to do what I was trained to do… They made me head boy.”_ _ _

___Giles frowned at the non sequitur. “I know. How is that…?”_ _ _

___“On the recommendation of teachers and a headmaster, not to mention a housemaster, who believed I had it in me to be a credit to them, to the Academy, to their teaching. I wanted to make them proud of me. I wanted them to feel they’d been justified in choosing me, despite my father…” Wesley moistened his lips. “If I helped now, with training the newly activated Slayers, perhaps there would still be a way to pay my debt to them for believing in me and to make them proud of me.”_ _ _

___There was a faraway look in his eyes as he said it that made Giles realize with an uncomfortable jolt, just how much it mattered to Wesley to be believed in, for someone whose authority he recognized and cared about, to be proud of him. But then Wesley was sighing sadly and shrugging. “But I can’t just leave them. They don’t know how to research. Gunn can read demon languages, it’s true, but only the ones that have a legal system affiliated with the demonic hall of records. Any of the demons who aren’t affiliated with that legal system or who pre-date it or who are too primitive or too sophisticated to have any part of demonic law are literally a closed book to him. Angel’s been around for two hundred and fifty years and never even bothered to learn Geshundi, and his spelling in Ortrax is so appalling that he can’t tell ‘omnipotent’ from ‘impotent’.”_ _ _

___“Doesn’t Illyria…?”_ _ _

___“Illyria has never troubled herself with the culture of anyone else. To her, demonic worlds were just something new to conquer. She has never had to take even basic steps to defend herself either. She was always too powerful to need to worry about it. Now she’s running on half power. She can’t just bend time or step into another dimension if danger threatens. She has to live within the confines of a human body, albeit one with extraordinary speed and strength. And how can she function in the world unless there is someone prepared to take on her guidance and to answer her questions? Spike has been doing his best, I can tell, but he’s not exactly a lodestone for morality at the best of times. And Gunn appears to have always had a death wish problem. I’ve found several references in my diaries to how haunted he is by the death of his sister and how much he blames himself. This is potentially an invaluable unit for the forces of good but if they’re all under-prepared and half the time are only going into battle because they miss the adrenaline rush or are half-hoping to get themselves killed, I don’t see how they’re going to last more than a few months.”_ _ _

___Giles topped up both of their tea from the pot. “Doesn’t that suggest that you – the previous version of you – must have played a pivotal role in helping to keep them alive?”_ _ _

___“Well…it’s hard to know exactly. Apparently Fred had a first class scientific mind and Cordelia had the visions, of course, which presumably gave them – gave us – something of an advantage when going into a hostile situation. However…yes, I can see that someone who was willing to plan and who had some in-depth knowledge of the demon world might have been useful on a number of occasions.”_ _ _

___“So, you’re staying here?” Giles handed him back his refilled cup. “As – you. You’ll be their Watcher as you are now?”_ _ _

___Wesley took the cup. “Thank you. Yes. It seems like the best solution. From what Angel has said, if I recover my memories – become the person I was – I’ll be so overwhelmed by my grief at losing Fred and the trauma of what I’ve endured over the past few years – not to mention my presumably constant and overwhelming sense of guilt at what I did to his son – that I won’t be able to function as Watcher. Or indeed as anything – except possibly a teapot.”_ _ _

___“His son is happy and safe.” Giles reached for the biscuit tin that they had so far managed to successfully conceal from the human gannets that inhabited the hotel with them. “And the prophecy was true. Angel did kill his son. You gave him back his son again when you smashed the Orlon window. Apparently Angel has spoken to Connor since then and Connor has confirmed that his memories also returned, that they have the consistency of a dream, that he prefers the life he has now, but he is grateful for what Angel did for him, and knows that he is his father.”_ _ _

___“So, Angel is now a bad dream to a boy he hoped to raise to be his pride and joy?”_ _ _

___“Wesley, haven’t you noticed that when Angel talks about Connor, he smiles? The boy is going to be a doctor. He’s going to make his family – and Angel – very proud. He’s going to help people. He’s going to do good, something he apparently wanted to do even in his previous incarnation. This story had a happy ending.”_ _ _

___“No thanks to me.”_ _ _

___“Yes, thanks to you. Biscuit?” Giles offered him the tin. “If you hadn’t stolen Connor, if Holtz hadn’t taken him into Quortoth, who knows if he would have survived those dangerous childhood years. Do you really think Wolfram & Hart wouldn’t have wanted to dissect him? Perhaps the Powers were looking out for the child they created, after all. Perhaps the only way Connor got to live was to be taken into a hell dimension.”_ _ _

___“Well, we’ll never know, will we?” Wesley broke a Rich Tea in half with precision._ _ _

___“You really could cut yourself a little slack.”_ _ _

___“I don’t like myself. I don’t like what a mess I made of my life. I don’t like inheriting this chaotic existence when I like things to be neat and orderly. I don’t like waking up to find I have burnt my bridges with the Council, my father, my country, that I messed up as a Watcher, and have had one disastrous romantic encounter after another, most of which seemed to end in a messy death.”_ _ _

___Giles sighed. “Wesley, trust me, the Council – the Academy – no one in England knows the first thing about what it means to be a Watcher except for the ones who had an actual Slayer. And that’s because it’s not something for which you can ever fully prepare. There comes a point where you just have to do it, and when you do it, when you’re responsible for the guidance and instruction of a living breathing human being who is as fallible and breakable as you are, mistakes will inevitably be made, but lessons are also learned. I have learned so much more from Buffy than I ever learned from the Council. You were under-prepared when you came to Sunnydale, it’s true – well, so was I. So is every Watcher who has ever turned up with his copy of the Watchers’ handbook under one arm and a briefcase full of research notes in the other. The Council don’t just separate themselves and their trainees from the realities of Slaying, they separate themselves from Life. Well, life is messy and painful and gets dirt under your fingernails. People die. People fail. People make terrible mistakes. The difference is in whether you have it in you to keep getting up again, when everything isn’t perfect, when it can’t be put back; when there is no restart button you can press so that…” Giles shook his head. “So that Faith never killed a man. So that Buffy never slept with Angel. So that Angel never killed the woman I love. So that Xander didn’t lose his eye. So that Willow didn’t dabble in magic that almost overwhelmed her and destroyed the world. You have to go on to the next place. To finding a way to deal with being in love with someone with whom you can never have a normal life. To being able to deal with your grief without letting it overwhelm you or make you hate someone who was as much a victim as you were. To learning to drive a car without proper depth perception. To helping Willow go on to the next place, as someone who is steeped in magic now, and who has to learn to find a way to control it and herself. That’s what life is and you can’t learn it out of books, Wesley. You have to get out there and just do it and fall down and screw up and get up again. That’s what Angel does every single day, after all.”_ _ _

___Wesley blinked and Giles wondered if he had understood, if this man, who looked like the Wesley who had endured so much, but who was mentally so fresh and innocent and newly-minted could grasp it. “I know. I wonder – I think what it must be like for him, to wake up each morning, and to hear the birds sing, and not be able to look at them. I wonder if he has a second before reality intrudes when he still thinks he’s Liam. Or does he wake to the remembered screams of all the people that he killed. All those murders he can’t take back? For which there can never be atonement. He has a debt he can never pay and yet he still pays it anyway. I suppose Spike doesn’t like to talk about his feelings on the matter. He’s in the unenviable position of being the second vampire with a soul, the apprentice who has ended up copying the steps of Angel’s life from carnage into a search for redemption – to others he can seem little more than a carbon copy but to himself he must feel entirely original – but although he doesn’t talk about, I presume he remembers the faces of his victims too – all those pleas for mercy that at the time he didn’t heed. And what happens to Illyria if she becomes too contaminated by her human side? Could a human ever survive the weight of death upon her shoulders? I feel they all have a death wish; they’re all in the process of some long jump from a cliff to a hell dimension below, they’ve just chosen to try to save some humans and kill some demons on the way. I wish I could find some hope for them, some…”_ _ _

___Wesley began to go through the papers on his desk. “I can’t accept that there can be no redemption for them, or that they should have to take full responsibility for crimes committed by their murderers. I suppose it’s a philosophical question about the true nature of a vampire, whether the vampiric infection and the loss of the soul reveals us all to be murderers at heart, or if the human is destroyed except for memories, and what Angel and Spike are now are demons with consciences. I suspect it’s more complicated than any simplistic analysis, and in some ways I don’t care. They are clearly not the people who committed these crimes and yet they are forced to carry the guilt for them. Why them and not every other murderous demon upon the earth – unless there is some special purpose intended for them? And if they have been selected by a higher power to be champions for humanity then surely there should be some reward? Not because it motivates them, not because it is the reason why they fight, but just because it…seems so unfair that they should have to pay and pay when no one else does, and never receive anything in return.”_ _ _

___Giles became aware that Angel and the others had returned and were standing in the doorway to the office._ _ _

___Wesley, who had reached down to pick up a dropped scroll, remained completely oblivious. “That’s another reason why I feel I have no choice but to stay, Giles. I can’t help feeling that some extra research might reveal more about their destiny, their purpose. The Council spent centuries researching the myth of the Slayer and as far as I can tell from your words, Buffy and Willow between them managed to find a deeper layer to that mythology than all those years of learned research ever uncovered _and_ what’s more managed to alter the power source of the Slayers and find a way to share it. A brilliant act, which, however reckless, has changed the odds from one Slayer fighting a million monsters to at least a few thousand Slayers being available to fight the good fight. I understand that sometimes one does have to throw the rulebook out of the window. And I refuse to believe that there are currently two vampires with souls, not to mention an Old One, all of whom have chosen to affiliate themselves with the cause of protecting mankind, and it not being of some greater significance. I don’t know if they’re meant to bring about the end of the world or avert it, but I can’t help feeling they must be here for something, and I’d rather like to know what that is. And, of course, there is the small matter of not wanting them to get themselves killed – something which, the more time I spend with them, seems to be far more of a miracle than the little matter of…” Wesley put the retrieved scroll triumphantly on the desk, beamed at Giles and then became aware that he had an audience._ _ _

___“Oh.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, that was rather swifter than I anticipated. Did you find the nest?”_ _ _

___“Found it. Killed em.” Buffy shouldered her axe while looking between Angel and Spike._ _ _

___“And you’re all…unharmed?” Wesley pressed, frowning at their silence._ _ _

___Gunn recovered first. “Yeah. We’re good. The girly necklace things worked like a charm.”_ _ _

___“Possibly because they actually _are_ a charm, Gunn.”_ _ _

___“And even though the demony thing gave it the good old college try, Spike didn’t get his head chopped off.”_ _ _

___“Apart from that everything went very well.” Angel was still gazing at Wesley._ _ _

___“Jolly good.” Wesley looked pointedly at puddle of green liquid by their feet which Giles noticed was spreading outwards at an alarming rate. “You seem to be um…dripping – on the floor, which I believe Xander swept quite recently.”_ _ _

___“We brought you a head back.” Spike held it up._ _ _

___“Oh, thank you!” Wesley’s eyes lit up and he hurried to take it from him, being careful to keep it away from the books as he carried it into the office. “I’d be fascinated to see how the cerebral cortex compares with that of a Geshinorax – it has been theorized that they share a common ancestor and the placement of the pineal gland could…” Seeing their expressions, he said, “Is something wrong?”_ _ _

___“You were saying nice things about them,” Buffy explained. “They’re not really used to it.”_ _ _

___“Oh.” Wesley placed the head on some newspaper. “Well, um… I was telling Giles that I think I can do more good here than in Cleveland. I’m sure those Slayers are doing a great deal of good too, but there is an infrastructure in place, or was until recently, that dealt with training Slayers. And I’m sure it was inadequate and Giles here was right to say that every Watcher is unprepared until he’s actually in the field and has the benefit of some training from his Slayer, but… There is no infrastructure to deal with being Watcher to a vampire with a soul or two vampires with a soul or an Old One in a human body. There is apparently only…me. And I feel I would be shirking my responsibilities if…”_ _ _

___Gunn looked at Angel. “Does that mean he likes us? He really, really likes us?”_ _ _

___“It means that I think that you’re even more in need of my help than a bunch of teenage girls.”_ _ _

___Spike was grinning. “And really when it comes right down to it, how useful are you going to be on the whole advising them about their periods thing anyway? With us, you don’t have to do that ever.”_ _ _

___Wesley blinked. “That hadn’t actually crossed my mind and now I’m hoping it never will again. Would you like to go and drip somewhere else because Giles and I are actually researching here?”_ _ _

___“You don’t want to hug?” Angel asked plaintively._ _ _

___Giles was certain that this time at least Wesley noticed the twinkle in the vampire’s eye as he said it. “And you’re still here because…?”_ _ _

___They backed out of his office, grinning, Illyria gazing at Wesley intently, Gunn and Spike play punching each other in the ribs, Angel smiling like a complete dork. Wesley looked completely unprepared for Buffy abruptly wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him tightly. “Thank you,” Giles heard her breathe. “I needed to know I was leaving them in safe hands and now I know I will be.”_ _ _

___Giles saw that Wesley had tears shining in his eyes. The man automatically made to avert his eyes, ashamed of this show of weakness, but then seemed to notice that Buffy’s were bright too. Giles hoped Wesley would understand her now as he never had in Sunnydale, and realize that, under the quips and jokes about her terrible taste in boyfriends and star-crossed lovers with their gypsy curse problem, her connection to these vampires was a uniquely painful one. And Wesley seemed to be getting it, reaching out to gently squeeze her shoulder without acting as if he were being asked to pet a tiger. “I’ll do my best,” he promised her._ _ _

___“That’s good enough for me.” She sniffed, wiped her eyes, kissed him on the cheek, said ‘Oh, cookies!’ Took a handful of biscuits and left._ _ _

___Giles silently handed Wesley a handkerchief and said tactfully. “So, the life cycle of the Imharis Demon? Where were we with that…?”_ _ _

___***_ _ _

___They all looked at the third eye winking in the back of the girl’s head in silence. Illyria put her head on one side, clearly fascinated. Spike grimaced. Gunn and Angel exchanged a ‘here we go again’ look that Wesley noticed at once._ _ _

___“We’ve encountered this before?”_ _ _

___“Skilosh,” Gunn told him._ _ _

___“Can you help?” The anxious Mr and Mrs Patterson looked between Angel and Wesley._ _ _

___“It’s curable. Wes found a de-oculating spell before.” Angel still looked somewhat glum._ _ _

___“I did? Oh, I mean…I did.” Wesley nodded at the worried parents in a way that he hoped would inspire confidence._ _ _

___Angel and Gunn exchanged another look. “The problem is what happens afterwards.”_ _ _

___Giles wandered into the office, intent on the papers he was reading, and holding onto his cup of tea, oblivious of the others, he glanced up to tell Wesley that he had found the papers on the cult of Narwath they had been researching, only to be confronted with a winking eye where it had no business to be._ _ _

___“Good lord.” His cup rattled alarmingly in its saucer but he did manage to keep it more or less level._ _ _

___“Skilosh spawn,” Angel explained. “They inject it into the cranium of human hosts. There tends to be a pretty short gestation period.”_ _ _

___“Ah.” Giles visibly thought of what it was going to do to that little girl’s skull to have a demon erupt out of it. “We’d better make sure it doesn’t come to term.”_ _ _

___“When did we encounter this before?” Wesley enquired. “If I have the date I can find the relevant notes I made at the time and we can speed up the process of curing it.”_ _ _

___“Early 2001,” Gunn told him. “Maybe January or February.”_ _ _

___Wesley smiled reassuringly at the parents. “I can assure you we will be able to solve this problem for you. You really have come to the right place.” Seeing Illyria still putting her head on one side and gazing unblinkingly at the third eye, he gently took her arm and towed her away. “Illyria, why don’t you…help me look for this information in my diaries?”_ _ _

___She turned to him at once. “Why do you wish me to assist you? Fred has no memory of these events.”_ _ _

___“Well, that makes two of us…” he murmured before leading her away from the nice normal people and their temporarily abnormal child._ _ _

___Left alone with the others, Giles found Gunn and Angel both looking at him expectantly and then at the worried-looking clients. Clearly he was expected to step into the breach left by Wesley’s departure. Deciding that the second these people were out of the door, he would explain to Angel that one of the advantages of being a librarian in an American High School was that you didn’t have to meet the ordinary public at any time and stood a pretty good chance of never having to meet a High School student either, he sighed inwardly and plastered on his best reassuring smile._ _ _

___“Would you like to sit down, Mr and Mrs…?”_ _ _

___“Patterson.” Gunn supplied the surname before slipping out of the door, Angel escaping with him at the same time._ _ _

___Wearily, Giles picked up a pen and essayed another smile. “Perhaps you could tell me exactly how this happened…?”_ _ _

___ _

___Glancing across at the office from their safe haven on the lobby banquette, Xander said to Buffy, “Don’t you think that’s kind of cruel? Making Giles talk to people who aren’t –” he ticked it off on his fingers, “a – Slayers, b – Watchers, c – English or d – Librarians?”_ _ _

___“It’s good for him.” Buffy licked chocolate from her fingers. “It expands his horizons.”_ _ _

___“He looks sort of trapped and unhappy to me.” Willow ducked her head so there was no danger of Giles beckoning to her to come and help him out._ _ _

___“What’s the problem?” Gunn enquired._ _ _

___“You made Giles talk to the normal people,” Willow explained. “He didn’t really have to… not in Sunnydale. Well, except for Buffy’s mom.”_ _ _

___“And the less said about his interaction with my mom the better.”_ _ _

___Xander looked at her sideways. “You’re never going to forgive him for that, are you?”_ _ _

___“Not in this lifetime, no. Or, come to think of it, as I’m onto my second – uh no, never.”_ _ _

___Gunn frowned. “But I thought that’s what Watchers did. Wes always does the talking to the people thing. Cordy used to check their credit rating. Wes would ask them all the right questions and tell them Angel really cared about their problems, and as long as they didn’t actually meet Angel, it was fine.”_ _ _

___“Hey,” the vampire protested. “I’ve been working on my empathy.”_ _ _

___“Well, Giles hasn’t,” Xander explained. “In Sunnydale we tended to shield him from the general public.”_ _ _

___“Librarian.” Spike nodded as if that explained everything. As Gunn looked at him in confusion he rolled his eyes. “Where else can you put a notice on the wall of your workplace that no one’s allowed to talk to you?”_ _ _

___Seeing Giles drop his pen on the floor, Buffy frowned. “Maybe Willow should help him out.”_ _ _

___As everyone looked at Willow, her eyes widened in panic. “I don’t like talking to people I don’t know.”_ _ _

___“Every stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet, Will,” Xander told her brightly._ _ _

___“Well, why can’t they be your friend you haven’t met yet or Buffy’s?”_ _ _

___“Because we’re eating chocolate.” Buffy held up her fingers. “Wouldn’t make a good impression.”_ _ _

___Willow quickly snatched a piece. “Me too.”_ _ _

___“Humans are pathetic,” Spike observed. “I’ll talk to them.”_ _ _

___“No!” Gunn grabbed one arm as Angel seized the other._ _ _

___“What?” Spike demanded. “You don’t think I’m a people person?”_ _ _

___Xander looked up at him. “Only in the way that say Imelda Marcos is a friend to the poor and needy.”_ _ _

___“I’ll do it.” Angel squared his shoulders. “I had to talk to people all the time when I was running a big evil law firm, after all.”_ _ _

___“No, you didn’t,” Gunn reminded him. “You got Harmony to screen your calls and you made Wes or I talk to the clients first.”_ _ _

___Angel blinked as the truth of Gunn’s words permeated but he only stabbed an accusing finger at him. “Well, why aren’t you talking to them then?”_ _ _

___“Because…” Gunn scratched his head awkwardly. “I don’t want to. The back of their kid’s head kept blinking at me. And how are we supposed to tell them that even if we get rid of the third eye, the rest of the Skilosh are going to….”_ _ _

___“…Target them for retribution.” They looked up to see Wesley walking down the stairs, intent on the diary he was reading. He turned a page. “At least this time we’ll be prepared and can formulate an appropriate strategy.”_ _ _

___“Would that be one that doesn’t involve getting a hole punched in the back of our heads or getting our clients killed?”_ _ _

___Wesley looked up from the notes in mild surprise. “I was thinking along the lines of luring the entire tribe to a location of our choice and wiping them out. What did you have in mind?”_ _ _

___“I was really concentrating most of my energies on ways to stop you using the word ‘gestating’.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked at him for a long moment. “You and I were really best friends?”_ _ _

___“Had your own handshake and everything,” Angel confirmed._ _ _

___“How very…adolescent of us.”_ _ _

___“Hey, our handshake was tight.” Gunn took some chocolate. “This is good. Is it imported?”_ _ _

___“Probably.” Buffy shrugged. “It’s from Giles’s secret stash of goodies he thinks are too good to share with us.”_ _ _

___Willow snatched her hand away from the bar. “You didn’t tell me it was stolen!”_ _ _

___“I prefer to think of it as…liberated.” Buffy took another piece. “It’s like – go, fly, stuffy English chocolate, find your way to new horizons.”_ _ _

___“It’s Cadbury’s.” Wesley looked at them in confusion. “That isn’t imported. That’s what you can buy at every newsagents.”_ _ _

___“Only if you’re in _England_ ,” Buffy reminded him. “Which if you ever stepped outside the hotel you’d realize that you’re not. For one thing it’s not raining all the time.”_ _ _

___“Actually the constant butchering of my mother tongue had pretty much tipped me off.”_ _ _

___Angel beamed paternally. “See, he’s all waspish again.”_ _ _

___Spike raised an eyebrow. “You must be so proud.”_ _ _

___“How is the tribe of Skilosh to be destroyed?” Illyria demanded._ _ _

___Wesley gave her a look of approval. “I’m glad one of us can stick to the point.”_ _ _

___“She just likes killing things.” Gunn took another piece of chocolate._ _ _

___“And you do not?” Illyria enquired, unblinkingly._ _ _

___Gunn went to answer her, faltered over her having a point, and then turned back to Wes. “So, you had a plan?”_ _ _

___“Are they bound by demon law?”_ _ _

___“No. They have their own separate justice system which involves anyone who isn’t a Skilosh not having any rights. It’s a problem with quite a few demon tribes. Well, most of them, actually.”_ _ _

___“Then luring them here and hacking them to pieces is looking like our best option.” Wesley closed the diary. “I’d better go and explain the situation to Mr and Mrs Patterson. Unless…Angel…?”_ _ _

___“No, you do it. I’ll…stand behind you and – lend moral support.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked over his shoulder. “And would you say here was the best place to bring them?”_ _ _

___“Bring who?”_ _ _

___They turned to see Lorne resplendent in a dressing gown of magnificent peacock blue silk. As they all looked at it, he shrugged. “It was a gift from an admirer. What, I can’t have admirers? Now, who are we bringing here and will I need to dress for dinner?”_ _ _

___“The gang of crazed vengeful Skilosh who are going to want to kill us after Wesley destroys their spawn,” Gunn answered helpfully._ _ _

___“So, that’s probably a ‘no’ on the formal wear,” Buffy added._ _ _

___“Oh yes, that’s a cracking idea.” Lorne held up his glass. “And luckily I came prepared.”_ _ _

___“Or we could just tell Mr and Mrs Patterson that we can’t help them and that they will soon find themselves the proud parents of an adult Skilosh and a somewhat messy corpse.” Wesley looked between them expectantly._ _ _

___Spike grimaced. “Or we could go with Wes’s first plan.”_ _ _

___“I’m cool with the demon bait idea,” Buffy shrugged._ _ _

___“I relish the prospect of such a battle,” Illyria observed._ _ _

___“Why am I not surprised?” Xander observed to Willow._ _ _

___“Okay then.” Wesley nodded to Buffy, Spike, Gunn and Illyria. “I suggest you make a study of the strengths and weaknesses of the hotel and see if you can agree on the most defensible position. It’s important that all of the Skilosh attend for the retribution or we’ll be sending the Pattersons home to an ambush. Gunn, if you could make some notes on everything you know about the tribal customs of the Skilosh that would be invaluable. I’ll also ask Giles to help me research with the books we have available to us. In the meantime, you and I, Angel, had better tell the Pattersons of our plan and see if we can obtain their consent.”_ _ _

___As Wesley walked towards the office with Angel beside him, Buffy licked some more chocolate from her fingers and looked at Willow. “He’s all manly when he gives orders, isn’t he?”_ _ _

___“Gives me chills,” Spike observed._ _ _

___“I still miss insane Wesley,” Xander admitted. “He was kind of cuddly.”_ _ _

___Gunn sighed. “Don’t. It’s not a joke to us.”_ _ _

___Xander looked at him. “I know. I was just… trying to lighten the mood. That’s kind of my allotted role, you see, in the imminent death circumstances – I make inappropriate jokes, everyone else snaps at me. It’s sort of a tradition.”_ _ _

___“I like your inappropriate jokes,” Willow assured him._ _ _

___“And the crazy amnesiac is now in charge?” Lorne looked around at them all. “Just checking, in case I missed something.”_ _ _

___“He’s Strategy Boy,” Buffy explained. She waited a beat before conceding, “Okay, he’s until recently crazy and still very amnesiac strategy boy but still pretty much the…”_ _ _

___“Man with the plan,” Gunn finished._ _ _

___“And would this plan involve us all risking our necks because it’s The Right Thing To Do?”_ _ _

___Spike shrugged. “Pretty much.”_ _ _

___“Well, then forgive me for failing to see the difference between Wesley being in charge and Angel being in charge. Either way it always seems to involve my property getting destroyed and my life being threatened.”_ _ _

___Buffy blinked. “There’s another way to live?”_ _ _

___Lorne took another gulp of his drink. “Apparently not.”_ _ _

___“So, why are you here, green genes?” Spike enquired. “Seeing as you’re a self-proclaimed coward and all?”_ _ _

___“Because our fearless heroes got my club blown up?”_ _ _

___Gunn gazed at him affectionately. “And…?”_ _ _

___“And I may have possibly caught a dose of that champion flu that was doing the rounds here a while back, but, trust me, I’m going to throw it off any time now.”_ _ _

___“Good luck with that,” Xander said sincerely._ _ _

___Lorne looked at Xander’s eye patch and took another sip of his drink. “Did you ever look around a room and see more people gathered together who are incapable of learning from their past mistakes?”_ _ _

___Spike looked across at Buffy. “Some past mistakes are better than others.”_ _ _

___Willow looked at Xander. “Much better.”_ _ _

___“Yeah.” Gunn looked at Wesley who was still talking to the Pattersons and then noticed everyone looking at him. “Hey, not that kind of past mistake.”_ _ _

___Lorne took another gulp of vodka. “You stick to that story, strudel, and none of us will mention the era of the warm fuzzy goddess love make out sessions, then perhaps someone could fill me in on how we’re going to be inviting imminent death this time?”_ _ _

___“We are intent upon inviting the wrath of the Skilosh by destroying their spawn so that they may seek to wreak their vengeance upon us,” Illyria explained._ _ _

___Lorne rolled his eyes. “Yes, because that went so well last time. No, your blueness, I got that piece of jolly news the first time. I meant nuts and bolts, how is this…happy aim to be achieved?”_ _ _

___Willow looked at Buffy. “Weren’t we supposed to be…?”_ _ _

___“Oh yeah.” Buffy finished licking the chocolate from her fingers. “Weak points. Defensible positions. Yadda yadda.”_ _ _

___“Make sure you lure them to somewhere dark and creepy,” Lorne called after them. “Oh yes, and let’s make certain we all split up and don’t switch any lights on while we’re at it.”_ _ _

___Spike shrugged. “Hey, if we’re going by the movies, it’s always the blonde who gets it first, so you should be okay. They always save the green guy to the end.”_ _ _

___“And you and Buffy may as well go and measure yourselves up for his-and-hers body bags. Although in your case, of course, a dust-buster will suffice…”_ _ _

___Gunn frowned. “Isn’t it only the virgin who ever survives?”_ _ _

___Lorne looked around at the assembled company. “We’re all so very dead.”_ _ _

___“Wes doesn’t remember having sex,” Xander pointed out. “Maybe that counts.”_ _ _

___“Are you kidding me? I don’t care what he remembers, he still has Lilah’s teethmarks on his ass.”_ _ _

___Gunn looked at Wesley with renewed interest. “Are you sure?”_ _ _

___“Maybe they’re Angel’s.” Spike also looked that way._ _ _

___“And…thank you for that image. I now have to go and scrub out my mind with Clorox,” Gunn told him, shouldering an axe._ _ _

___“Why are you taking that on a reconnaissance?” Xander enquired._ _ _

___“Just in case,” Gunn said as if it was obvious. “And anyway, the best way to test a defensible position is carrying the same equipment you’ll be holding in the battle situation.”_ _ _

___Lorne held up his glass. “I am so with you on that, sugar. And, for strict accuracy, I really need a refill, because, trust me, on any occasion when we’re inviting vengeful Skilosh around to lay their babies in our brains, I’ll be needing a _large_ drink.”_ _ _

___***_ _ _

___“Are you sure Willow is going to be okay?” Xander asked Buffy for the third time. He said it in a whisper on account of their position in a darkened corridor lying – well, standing, to be strictly accurate – in wait for the bad guys, but it was a penetrating whisper as whispers went. Buffy sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t share his concern, but she was just getting a little fed up with being asked the same question over and over with only the name of the person being asked about altering. Gunn had asked her that about Wesley and Angel had done the same; even Illyria, She Without Human Emotions, had suggested that her place was in the kitchen with those who were less capable than she of fighting off the Skilosh._ _ _

___She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go through it again, shall we? Willow is in the kitchen. So are the Pattersons. So is Wesley. So is Giles. Three hours ago exactly, Wesley and Giles destroyed the Skilosh spawn in Julie Patterson’s head. Any minute now the vengeful Skilosh tribe will arrive determined to kill or capture us so that they can either stomp on our corpses until their claws are sticky or inject disgusting Skilosh goop into our skulls and make us hatch out little Skilosh for them. They will try to get to the dining room to get to the kitchen. We will try to kill as many of them as possible before they reach the dining room. You and I taking this corridor, Gunn and Spike taking the other access corridor while in the dining room itself, protecting the kitchen _and_ Willow are…”_ _ _

___“Angel and Illyria putting aside their differences to come together to fight evil in a box office record weekend buddy cop kind of way.”_ _ _

___Xander and Lorne both looked around to find Lorne standing next to them. “Why are you here?” Xander enquired._ _ _

___“It seemed the safest place.”_ _ _

___Buffy preened. “You think I’m a better fighter than Angel or Spike?”_ _ _

___“Of course I do, sugar. And unlike them you can actually strategize.”_ _ _

___Buffy nodded at Xander. “He has an eye patch because of my great strategizing skills.”_ _ _

___“When you first arrived in Sunnydale and gathered your little clan of goodies around you, how many of you were there?”_ _ _

___“Well, me, Giles, Willow, and Xander…” She grimaced. “Okay, I get you.”_ _ _

___“Good, because much as I love Angel – and for those not keeping up on current events that’s considerably less than I used to before he messed around with my memory and screwed up my empathic abilities to the point where I can’t trust myself to take a reading from a well-trained budgerigar – he has shed more than a few associates along the way.”_ _ _

___“Do you blame him?” It hadn’t occurred to Buffy that anyone might. No one could be harder on himself than Angel so it felt like kicking a man when he was down to pile yet more guilt onto him._ _ _

___Lorne sighed. “I try not to, sweetheart, I really do. But the fact remains that even if you go through every room in this hotel you’re not going to find Cordelia or Fred.”_ _ _

___“I lost Anya and Spike. Not to mention a lot of girls whose names I didn’t learn on purpose because I knew they were going to get killed.”_ _ _

___“Wesley doesn’t know the names of the people who died on Pylea following his orders but the humans on that world are still alive in part because of his plan. And I have to say, snowcone, I haven’t noticed a whole lot of evil Ubervamps chowing down on the residents recently. There are always going to be losses.”_ _ _

___“You have no idea how many times I have screwed up over the years,” Buffy told him passionately. “And isn’t the main difference between the people that I got killed and the people that Angel got killed that you didn’t know the people I got killed?”_ _ _

___Lorne sighed. “Cordy and Fred… It wasn’t supposed to end like that for them.”_ _ _

___“Xander lost Anya.” Buffy touched his arm as she said his name. “I lost Spike. She may have been a vengeance demon and he may have been a vampire and they may both have deserved to die for what they’d done over the years, but they were our friends and we cared about them and we lost them. That’s what happens when you go out there and try to do something about all the darkness in the world. You make mistakes.”_ _ _

___“Angel didn’t make a mistake, he made a _decision_ – to mess with our memories with his eyes open. And he took the deal at Wolfram  & Hart knowing that we were no longer exactly in our right minds.”_ _ _

___“You loved Fred.” Buffy thought of how she would feel if it had been Willow._ _ _

___“Yes.” Lorne’s red eyes showed how much the loss of her had wounded him. “I really did. It hurts every time I think about her and it hurts every time I look at Illyria, but, you know what? I wouldn’t want to forget her and there is no way in any hell dimension that Wesley would either. If he was in his right memory. And I don’t think Fred would want to be forgotten. And you can quote all the Christina Rossetti at me that you like, sugar plum, I’m still not buying it. She was the woman of his dreams and now she’s just another face in a photograph.”_ _ _

___“It’s Wesley’s choice…”_ _ _

___“Angel told him he didn’t want those memories back. And if Wesley has a fault – and let’s face it, Wesley has dozens of faults – it’s his habit of assuming that because a guy has been walking this world for two and a half centuries that he’s somehow _learned_ something during that time. I don’t blame him because I was guilty of that myself. Angel has glamour, and I don’t mean the magical pixie dust kind. I mean the kind that makes film stars look a foot taller than everyone else in the room.”_ _ _

___“But Wesley doesn’t feel like that about Angel any more.” Xander grimaced. “That came out wrong. I mean – supposing he had the crush when he first came to LA – he’s over it now. He doesn’t even remember having it. Not that I’m saying he had it in the first place because that just makes me…deeply uncomfortable.”_ _ _

___“No.” Lorne looked at him levelly. “He’s just in the same mindset he was when he first met Angel and thought he had all the answers.”_ _ _

___“He doesn’t seem…crushy to me,” Buffy insisted._ _ _

___“Everyone else in this hotel thinks he needs to remember what happened except for Angel. Who is he listening to?”_ _ _

___Buffy and Xander exchanged a look. “You may have a point,” Xander admitted. “I’m just not comfortable about discussing Wesley’s possible crushes.”_ _ _

___“You need to tell Giles to get in there and start being the father figure instead.”_ _ _

___“Giles isn’t old enough to be Wesley’s father!” Buffy could hardly have been more appalled._ _ _

___“Who cares? He’s human, he’s English, he’s a Watcher, and he’s never locked Wesley in a cupboard…” Lorne broke off hastily. “He’s an acceptable substitute authority figure, that’s all I’m saying.”_ _ _

___“Instead of trying to get Giles to be the guy Wesley hero worships instead of Angel, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get Wesley to start thinking for himself?” Xander suggested._ _ _

___“Actually, it always makes me nervous when Wesley starts thinking for himself. I just don’t want him listening to Angel either. I’m not saying there needs to be hero worship, I’m just saying – Giles seems like a nice _sane_ normal sort of person whose advice Wesley could be taking. And I was thinking perhaps you could persuade Giles to start handing out some of that advice. And perhaps some of that advice could be…”_ _ _

___“Giles isn’t going to try to influence Wesley,” Buffy assured him. “He’s going to let him make up his own mind.”_ _ _

___“Are we sure that’s a good idea?”_ _ _

___Xander looked at Lorne for a moment. “Aren’t you the guy who’s supposed to help people find their own path?”_ _ _

___“Yeah, well I gave that up for Lent. On account of all the people I know taking a sky dive off their own path onto a much much worse path even after I’d told them what their own path was meant to be.”_ _ _

___“What’s Wesley’s path?” Buffy asked._ _ _

___Lorne shook his head. “Sorry, sugar, not even the Slayer gets to hear anyone’s path but her own. I’m just saying – sticking his head in the sand and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t, that’s not Wesley’s way. He used to care about truth, and his life right now – it’s a lie. Another rose-tinted necro-tempered lie. Just like the one that just drove him right to the brink of his full strength crazy. I’ve lost two people that I cared about. I don’t have that many left. I’d like to try to keep them in one piece and in their right mind. And when I say ‘right mind’ I mean the full War and Peace, Ring of the Nibelungen, whole damned History of Middle Earth. Wesley deserves more than the Cliff Notes to his own life. And as no one else seems to be saying it out loud I’d like Giles to.”_ _ _

___Buffy straightened up, axe in hand. “It’s not that I don’t care about Wesley’s mental health situation, Lorne, but I really think we need to postpone this conversation.”_ _ _

___“Why?” Lorne demanded. “So we can let another day go by pretending everything is okay when it isn’t?”_ _ _

___“No.” She caught him by the arm and pulled him behind her. “So we can deal with the two dozen angry Skilosh currently running towards us with big nasty weapons.”_ _ _

___ _

___Illyria looked at Angel impatiently. “We should assist them.”_ _ _

___“We’re the second line of defence. That means we wait until the first line breaks.” Angel found that talking to Illyria habitually gave him a pain in the jaw. It had taken him until now to realize it was because she made him grit his teeth so hard. He could hear as well as she could the sounds of battle outside the two access doors to the dining room, and, given that Gunn and Buffy were two of the people fighting, he wasn’t exactly enjoying standing here and doing nothing either, but Wesley and Giles had insisted this was the best strategy and he trusted their judgement._ _ _

___He heard Spike shout: ‘Come on then, you three-eyed wankers!’ just before green goop splattered across the glass panel in the left swing door. There was the thud of something solid as the doors were knocked open by a flying object that turned out to be Gunn, who picked himself up, looked across at Angel, said, “They’ve learned to use weapons,” and then threw himself back into the fray._ _ _

___Angel looked from one door to the next, wondering when the break would come that meant retreat was the only safe option for the pairs outside._ _ _

___“I do not care for a battle in which I can do no violence.”_ _ _

___Angel looked at Illyria and thought for the hundredth time how much chopping her head straight off her shoulders seemed like such a good idea. It was unfortunate that no one else seemed to agree with him. They all seemed to think that, as she was capable of mixing up being an arrogant god-king with having an all-too-human crush on Wesley, that she was salvageable. It didn’t help that Xander had turned up as the ex-honey of a vengeance demon who had apparently given her life in the end to save a human after a few years of his influence. He’d thought about kicking Xander under the table while he was telling Wesley the story of Anya but had realized in time that it would only serve to convince his already somewhat dubious disciples of his lack of human empathy._ _ _

___“There will be plenty of violence to do, trust me,” he told her impatiently._ _ _

___“I do not trust you.” She gazed at him from her unblinking blue eyes – so unlike Fred’s warm brown ones. “You are a liar and a thief.”_ _ _

___“I’m neither of those things,” he retorted angrily, breaking off to run to catch Xander as he was thrown through the swing doors by a savage backhand from a vengeful Skilolsh. Angel held him up under the arms. “Want to bring the fight in here?” he asked eagerly._ _ _

___Xander wiped the blood from his mouth. “Buffy thinks we can stall them a little longer. Take out a few more first.”_ _ _

___Angel’s face fell. “Okay.”_ _ _

___“Can you give me a push?” Xander enquired._ _ _

___Angel obliged, giving him a solid shove that gave Xander the impetuous to raise his axe, sound a battle cry and make a fair approximation of a pissed off Gunn as he charged back through the doors. Angel turned back to Illyria. “I’m not a liar or a thief.”_ _ _

___“You lied to Wesley about his past and you stole his memories. That makes you both of those things.”_ _ _

___“I was trying to protect my son!”_ _ _

___“What do your motives matter if your actions lack all honour?”_ _ _

___“What do you know of honour?”_ _ _

___“Wesley was teaching me of it. He was reading to me of the codes of chivalry of ancient warriors of this world.” She grabbed Angel by the shirt and yanked him forward. “You would keep him from me.”_ _ _

___“Yes, I would keep him from you,” he snapped back. “You were driving him _insane_. He’d look at you and see the face of the woman he loved – the woman _you_ killed. You were a walking reminder of everything he’d lost.”_ _ _

___“She loved him.” Illyria gazed at him intently. “She felt stirrings of love for him many times before she admitted to them. But she feared the grief that it would bring; she feared the instability in him. She feared to hurt his friendships with others. She feared to lose his friendship herself. She delayed too long. She knew that. She died full of regret for the time she would never spend with him. She was afraid to die.”_ _ _

___“Don’t tell him that!” Angel hissed at her. “Don’t ever tell him that!”_ _ _

___“I have not.” He saw something flicker in her gaze that was uncomfortably close to emotion. She dropped her gaze. “I take no pleasure in wounding him. You do not trust me. You think that if you brought him back that I would injure him in his mind.”_ _ _

___“You’ve already injured him. You ripped out his heart.”_ _ _

___“You speak in riddles. His heart still beats.”_ _ _

___“If it wasn’t for you, he could…” Angel broke off._ _ _

___“It is because of me that you fear his restoration? That is because you do not know him.”_ _ _

___“I know him better than anyone… I know him better than you.”_ _ _

___“Wesley is stronger than you think him. You do not pay him the respect of one warrior to another.”_ _ _

___“No one respects Wes more than I do.”_ _ _

___“Then why do you seek to always protect him from the truth? Why do you think yourself strong enough to carry the burden of memory yet consider him too weak?”_ _ _

___“I don’t think him weak.” Angel snatched a breath. “I just think he’s suffered enough.”_ _ _

___“He would not want to forget her. Fred, the owner of this body before it became mine.”_ _ _

___Angel yanked her hand off his shirt. “You just think that if he remembers her he’ll be drawn to you, the way he was before, that sick compulsion to try to help you and guide you because of the way you look…”_ _ _

___“You are wrong.” She put her head on one side, gazing unblinkingly into his eyes. “He has offered me his help and guidance already. He has spent many hours with me unbeknown to you, teaching me the ways of this world even without remembering the one whose body I now inhabit. You fear to lose him.”_ _ _

___“I fear to break him!” Angel snapped at her. “You gave him back to me in pieces, Illyria. He went into that hell dimension clinging to sanity by a fingernail, and then he let go and I caught him. _I_ caught him. Not you. Do you think I like him not remembering me? Everything we’ve been through? I’ve already been through this! Events that don’t have meaning any more because the only other person in the world who knows about them doesn’t remember. I want him back more than I want… I just don’t want him back more than I want to see him destroyed again. He’s okay like this. He doesn’t have nightmares. He can do good. That’s all he ever wanted was to help people, do some good, make a difference, use all that knowledge and training to protect people from some of the darkness out there. All you want is for him to love you the way he loved Fred. Well, he never will. Giving him back his memory isn’t going to make him love you. It’s just going to make him nuts.”_ _ _

___“How could one as lowly as you presume to know my wishes or anticipate my wants? You think you are the only one who cares for Wesley’s happiness.”_ _ _

___“Since when did you ever give a damn about anyone except yourself?”_ _ _

___“Since when did you, vampire?”_ _ _

___The simultaneous slam of bodies impacting swing doors made them both wheel around. Illyria caught Gunn as Angel grabbed Lorne. Xander went skidding across the floor as Buffy backed up, looking over her shoulder to say. “We’re defending this room now.”_ _ _

___Illyria set Gunn back on his feet and then shoved him to the side as the Skilosh charged, vicious serrated weapons raised. She smiled coldly. “At last, I may do some violence.”_ _ _

___Gunn wiped some green blood from his eye and held up his own axe, not backing down as more Skilosh poured through the doors. Angel shoved Lorne into the centre of the circle they formed, the rest of them standing back to back, Buffy to his right, Illyria to his left, Gunn to her left, Spike between Gunn and Xander, and Xander between Buffy and Spike._ _ _

___The leader of the Skilosh, gazed at the kitchen. “The destroyers of our spawn lie through that door.”_ _ _

___“A prize for the big ugly demon on the right,” said Buffy brightly. “But, guess what, you still don’t get to touch any of them – ever.”_ _ _

___“We will kill all of you half-breeds and then use the destroyers of our spawn to replace those of us who have fallen today.”_ _ _

___“I am no vampire.” Ilyria gazed at the Skilosh contemptuously. “And you shall pay heavily for your insolence.”_ _ _

___“Yes, because species identification is really what’s important right now,” Angel muttered._ _ _

___“Will you two get over it?” Gunn demanded._ _ _

___“Yeah, can the rest of us just enjoy killing a few demons without having it spoiled by you two bitching at each other all the way through it?” Spike added._ _ _

___And then as the Skilosh all rushed them simultaneously, there was no time for anything except trying not to die._ _ _

___ _

___Willow exchanged a glance with Giles. They had both been trying not to meet Wesley’s eye as Angel and Illyria had their all-too-audible argument in the dining room. Wesley had looked extremely uncomfortable and tried to drown it out by making small talk with Mr and Mrs Patterson. They, however, had moved far too far from their normal comfort zone to be able to converse rationally, particularly with an Englishman. Willow had been impressed by how tactful and patient Wesley was with them; especially as tact and patience were not characteristics she remembered the Wesley who had first come to Sunnydale displaying to any notable degree. He had tried to keep them concentrating on everyday things like the children’s hobbies and what sports they enjoyed. Giles had eyed the children warily, as if he was unsure as to whether or not they might actually bite, and taken refuge in the spell books they had brought in with them._ _ _

___Willow suspected she was not the only one who believed the Skilosh would break through somehow, and she had a spell all ready for them. Wesley had seemed to be of the same mind as he had been careful to position the chairs for the Pattersons in a circle and had kept them distracted while Willow spread some twice blessed sage and hemlock around them, dropping some used horseshoe nails at intervals around the circle. She wished that some of the spellbook ingredients would get an upgrade to used spark plugs or the like but until they did used horseshoe nails it was. She had given the little girl, Julie, in whose head the Skilosh spawn has originally been laid, the focusing crystal to hold and as it was a pretty crystal and Julie a very conscientious little girl, Willow hoped that she would remain the centre of the spell if it became necessary to use it. Willow smiled at her now in a way that she hoped was reassuring, but they could all hear the sound of battle raging. All that slicing and splattering. The doors had round windows in them and although they were bolted closed there was nothing to be done to stop the sounds coming through them or to prevent the Pattersons from seeing the green blood spattering across the windows._ _ _

___“So, baseball? I’ve never really understood how Little League works…” Wesley darted a glance at the doors as they bulged with the impact of something solid._ _ _

___“Oh, yeah? Want a piece of me you ugly three-eyed son of a…” The end of Spike’s sentence was muffled by the splatting sound of something fleshy impacting with something sharp and metallic._ _ _

___Wesley grimaced. “And – perhaps we should…” Seeing Patterson’s face, he sighed, “Drop the charade and admit there are a horde of angry demons just outside the door. However, I can assure that our colleagues out there are trained demon fighters with many years experience in protecting the…helpless from harm.”_ _ _

___“I work in advertising,” Patterson observed._ _ _

___“That’s all right.” Giles looked up from the book he was reading. “We still think you and your family have a right to be protected from vengeful demons.”_ _ _

___Wesley nodded earnestly. “Yes, we don’t judge.”_ _ _

___Patterson looked at them in confusion and Giles and Wesley both realized a moment too late that the man hadn’t been making them an apology after all, just the beginning of a pronouncement._ _ _

___“That’s interesting,” said Willow quickly. “All those…products, and nifty little…jingles.”_ _ _

___There was an uncomfortable silence before Patterson said again, “I work in advertising.”_ _ _

___This time they just nodded politely as he’d evidently expected them to do the first time. He continued: “And I have to tell you that your ‘help the helpless’ byline – it’s not a winner. What you’re doing right there is disempowering the potential client. You’re placing a barrier between the product you’re offering – your assistance – and the client’s desire to accept it. What you’re doing with that is you’re saying ‘only the helpless need our help’ thereby designating potential clients self-assessed ‘helpless’. Well, that’s not going to fly with your average breadwinner. He’s proud of his abilities. He doesn’t regard himself as helpless. You see where I’m going with this?”_ _ _

___Wesley and Giles exchanged a glance and Willow thought again how cute they looked together and what a pity it was they couldn’t just set up home together and be happy doing Watcher things and synchronising cleaning their glasses – not that Wesley seemed to have glasses any more, but although he didn’t need them he seemed to miss them. She was sure she’d seen him looking longingly at Giles’s a few times as if he missed the comfort of looking over them at people and taking them off and putting them on again when he didn’t want to make eye contact._ _ _

___“Well…” Wesley murmured. “I suppose I… Perhaps not.”_ _ _

___Patterson rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even want to come to you guys because of it. It was only Sally here who persuaded me.”_ _ _

___“The back of your daughter’s head was blinking and you were worried that obtaining assistance in the matter might somehow impugn your masculinity?” Wesley enquired._ _ _

___Patterson nodded emphatically. “You see how off-putting that kind of a by-line can be?”_ _ _

___Wesley looked across at Giles in a ‘words fail me’ way that Willow thought was really very cute._ _ _

___Giles lied glibly, “Well, you see, Mr Patterson, we actually obtained the help of a trained psychiatrist in coming up with that ‘help the helpless’ tag for the very good reason that we can only help those people who are capable of overcoming those kind of prejudices. Our work is so complicated and dangerous that if people aren’t prepared to put themselves entirely in our hands then it’s very difficult for us to assist them. People who can admit that they are in need of help are the only people we _can_ help. You see?”_ _ _

___Wesley gave Giles a look that was so entirely admiring that Willow wondered if perhaps there was still hope of them eloping together to somewhere nice in England where it didn’t perhaps rain as much as the other places, and where there was better food as well as the inevitable cricket, tea, and umbrellas. Apparently fibbing fluently was admirable when other Watchers did it._ _ _

___Wesley recovered his voice and said, “Yes, absolutely. Trained psychiatrist.”_ _ _

___“Well, I have to tell you, buddy, that I think you’re losing a lot of potential clients. Now, my firm, we’d be pleased to take a look at your needs and see if we couldn’t come up with something for you that has a bit more zip to it. I could give you a special rate. And then there’s your logo. What does a diseased lobster have to do with being paranormal detectives anyway?”_ _ _

___“It’s an Angel.” Wesley looked down at the card the man held out to him. “Designed exclusively for us by a late associate of ours.”_ _ _

___“It doesn’t look like an angel.”_ _ _

___Willow had to admit its resemblance to an angel seemed to her to be only passing as well but she wasn’t allowing Cordelia’s artwork to be dissed. “It’s surrealist,” she said loftily. “All the best logos are these days.”_ _ _

___“The artist used Jungian mandala symbolism,” Giles added. “It’s proven to have a soothing effect on anyone who looks at it.” As Mr Patterson gazed at the card again with a frown of confusion, Willow had a terrible suspicion that Giles might be starting to enjoy himself._ _ _

___“Why does that woman have blue hair?” the little boy asked. They all looked up to see Ilyria visible through the round windows holding a Skilosh aloft by the throat. It was abruptly tossed out of sight as she strode out of their field of vision with a murderous look on her perfect face. A second later there was a squishing sound of Skilosh being skewered by something long and pointy._ _ _

___“She’s in a band,” Wesley said. “ _God-Kings of the Primordium_.”_ _ _

___“Giles is in it, too,” Willow said quickly. “He plays the guitar. And sings.”_ _ _

___Wesley looked at Giles in surprise. “You do? I mean – of course, you do.” He turned back to Mr Patterson. “Spike, of course, is the drummer.”_ _ _

___Giles and Wesley smirked at one another again and Willow realized they were _definitely_ enjoying this far too much._ _ _

___That was when a loud thumping sound, much too close, and on the other side of the kitchen from the dining room, made them exchange a very different kind of look. Giles said, “Willow, why don’t you…?”_ _ _

___She was already chanting the incantation while Wesley said rapidly to the Pattersons, “Just for your extra protection, Willow is going to erect a spell barrier between you and the…”_ _ _

___A part of the wall that had seemed entirely solid was jerked up to reveal a dozen angry Skilosh, slightly soot-streaked in appearance, clambering out of the space with weapons in hand._ _ _

___“…crazed vengeful demons who managed to find the old coal chute that the rest of us missed.” Wesley turned to her urgently. “Willow…”_ _ _

___She finished the chant just in time, throwing up her hands as the circle shimmered and then held. Something proven as the lead Skilosh rushed at Julie and was repelled. Willow began to back up, glad that Giles and Wesley were with here but also feeling that perhaps a slayer or vampire might not have been a bad idea either._ _ _

___“And there was a particular reason why you placed us _outside_ the protective circle?” Giles murmured._ _ _

___Willow glanced up at him. “You can’t use magic from inside it and I thought I might need some.”_ _ _

___Wesley stepped in front of her a second after Giles, both of them snatching up swords as they did so. “Good idea,” Wesley said brightly. “Perhaps some Skilosh killing magic would be in order, round about…” As one rushed him and he brought up his sword, “Now!”_ _ _

___As Willow opened her mouth to chant a rapid disorientation spell, the second Skilosh threw a bottle of liquid at her. She put up her hands to ward it off, afraid it was vitriol, but it only splashed, apparently harmlessly, onto her skin. It was only as she once again tried to cast a spell that she realized her voice was gone. She put a hand to her throat and gestured frantically at Giles, who pushed her further behind him and thrust his sword at the Skilosh who had stolen her voice._ _ _

___“Keep behind us, Willow,” Wesley told her, unnecessarily, she thought, as if he imagined for one minute she had any intention of rushing a bunch of angry Skilosh with no magic to aid her and no weapon to hand except the old frying pan she’d just snatched up, he had another think coming._ _ _

___Wesley surprised her by skewering one Skilosh with a sword and snatching the weapon from its hand as he did so, using it to block another attack while fending off a third with his first blade. His fighting seemed to be instinctive and fuelled by a fear of imminent death, not to mention imminent failure, but so far at least he was holding his own. Giles was fighting with a dogged and rather graceful precision that on another occasion she might have enjoyed watching, but the danger to herself and two people she cared about was severely restricting her pleasure in Giles’s agility and strength._ _ _

___As Giles turned his head to see if Willow was still safe, a Skilosh swung a vicious serrated blade at him. Willow threw herself at the Skilosh’s arm, just managing to grab it in time, only to find herself gazing into angry Skilosh eyes before the demon flung her contemptuously at the doors to the dining room._ _ _

___“Willow!” Wesley swung around in anxiety for her, dropping his guard and Giles only just yanked him out of the way of a potentially killing blow._ _ _

___The Skilosh were trying without success to break through the protective barrier around the Pattersons, but the children were both clinging to one another and screaming in fear. Willow hammered on the dining room doors, having to stand on tiptoe to reach the top bolt. She didn’t know if there were fourteen or forty Skilosh on the other side of this door, but there were now a dozen in here and she didn’t see how Giles and Wesley could hold them for much longer. Wesley was still fighting doggedly, but he didn’t seem to know how to fight dirty, much too Marquess of Queensbury to do as Giles was doing and elbow Skilosh hard in the head or use his knee in their groins. He parried and thrust and blocked and stabbed with movements that looked as if they had been taught in fencing class but although he was showing a lot of courage in standing up to the Skilosh he was barely holding his ground. The look Giles darted her over his shoulder told her that he also knew they couldn’t keep them off for much longer and she yanked open the dining room door, banging her frying pan against it to gain the attention of the people in the room._ _ _

___The floor was slippery with green gloop and Skilosh corpses and she averted her eyes instinctively from the gory mess._ _ _

___Buffy said, “Giles!” just as Angel said, “Wes!” And then they were both charging towards the kitchen to lend assistance._ _ _

___Angel grabbed Wesley by the shoulder and yanked him out of the way of a Skilosh axe, shoving him behind him while Buffy moved shoulder to shoulder with Giles, kicking off one Skilosh, and then as another rushed at them, snatching up a knife from the counter and hurling it at it with the speed, strength and accuracy to nail it between the eyes._ _ _

___“Willow!” Xander pulled her out of the way of an advancing Skilosh, which Spike leapt in front of her to deal with it. “Are you okay?”_ _ _

___She pointed to her mouth plaintively, and he pulled her behind him, blocking an attack from a Skilosh as he said. “Well, you’re either hungry or you’ve lost your voice.”_ _ _

___She pinched him indignantly and he grinned at her, his handsome face endearingly piratical behind the eye patch. “Not hungry then? Because I have a chocolate in my pocket.”_ _ _

___Illyria sliced the head off a Skilosh that was making for them purposefully, barely pausing in her stride before she marched to where Wesley was and started killing everything that looked as if it might possibly threaten him. Looking around at the dining room, Willow saw that Gunn was defending Lorne who was bravely at least making slashing motions with a elegantly curved sword that Willow just knew Buffy and Angel were going to fight over the possession of the second the fight was over._ _ _

___Buffy had that determined look on her face that meant none of the bad people was going home alive tonight. Willow thought of it as her _No one threatens my Watcher and lives_ expression, and noticed that Angel was wearing the same look while slicing up Skilosh with unscientific brutality. Illyria was an unstoppable force and Spike was – well, having way too much fun with all the slicing and dicing and squishing and splattering he was getting to do. As the Skilosh began to realize the odds were against them, Wesley said breathlessly, “It may be unsporting to attack an enemy in retreat but we can’t guarantee the Pattersons’ safety unless…” Before the words were fully out of his mouth, Spike and Illyria had already charged after the fleeing Skilosh; Illyria slamming the coal chute entrance closed a second before they reached it and turning on them with her extra creepy showing-some-expression-and-all-of-it-malevolent face. Willow averted her eyes as lots of chopping and squishing noises sounded, and hoped that Julie and her little brother were doing the same thing._ _ _

___Willow looked over her shoulder to see Gunn punch one Skilosh in the face to send it reeling, before hacking off another’s head with an axe. He did move with astonishing grace and strength for a human, she couldn’t help thinking. The one he’d punched reeled close to Xander who decapitated it with a swing of his own axe that, if lacking some of Gunn’s power and elegance, did nevertheless send its head in one direction and its body in the other._ _ _

___Illyria strode back into the dining room and surveyed it in disappointment. “Are there no more of this enemy left to fight?”_ _ _

___Angel stabbed the last one and withdrew his sword. “We’re done.”_ _ _

___Buffy also surveyed the battlefield. “Well, that was…”_ _ _

___“Bracing?” Wesley offered. He was lightly splattered in green goop but seemed quite cheerful about it. “Is everyone okay?”_ _ _

___Willow pointed plaintively to her mouth._ _ _

___“She doesn’t appear to be hungry,” Xander explained._ _ _

___Giles and Wesley converged on her at once, both inspecting the stains on her clothing with every sign of interest, and hardly noticing the Skilosh corpses they automatically stepped over en route to her. Giles sniffed while Wesley tentatively tasted._ _ _

___“Saffron, mandrake and…” Wesley turned to Giles for confirmation. “Is it horehound?”_ _ _

___“Monkshood, I think. And, yes, I definitely detect some fennel. Perhaps a pinch of locust.”_ _ _

___“They also do blind tastings,” Buffy explained to Gunn. “Put them on Name That Stew and they _always_ win the microwave.”_ _ _

___As Giles and Wesley both gave her a withering look, she looked across at Willow. “Do you think they teach that expression in Watcher School?”_ _ _

___“Of course they do, Buffy,” Xander wiped his sword on his coat. “Snooty Expressions class comes right after the Tea Brewing and Wearing Tweed classes.”_ _ _

___“Are you okay?” Angel looked at Wesley anxiously before glancing around at the others. “Is everyone okay?”_ _ _

___“No.” Lorne grimaced as he stepped over a dead Skilosh. “This is so not my idea of a good evening in. And look at my jacket. Do you know how much this fabric costs a yard? And that’s without even going into the emotional trauma I’ve suffered at having to witness so much violence. Lover not a fighter, remember?”_ _ _

___Angel sighed. “Does anyone have any real injuries that aren’t related to clothing or emotional trauma?”_ _ _

___Willow pointed plaintively at her mouth. Angel gave her a sympathetic look but said, “I’d still rather they stole your voice than chopped off your head, Willow.”_ _ _

___“And so say all of us.” Buffy hugged her, gaze flickering around her people to assess their condition as she did so. “Xander, are you hurt?”_ _ _

___“Just a scratch,” he told her. “I was being all heroic and silent about it, but it’s actually really starting to sting now.”_ _ _

___“Gunn’s bleeding.” Spike glanced across at him._ _ _

___“Just nicked me, I’m good,” he assured them._ _ _

___“Okay, Giles, can you patch up Gunn and Xander? Buffy, Spike, can you help me drag these corpses down to the basement so we can dismember them and stick them in the incinerator?”_ _ _

___Spike shrugged. “Who knew you were such a fun date?”_ _ _

___Buffy nodded. “Yep. What girl can refuse an offer like that?”_ _ _

___“Excuse me…”_ _ _

___They all looked around guiltily as Patterson’s voice reached them. Willow pointed frantically to her mouth and Giles and Wesley exchanged a look._ _ _

___“Can you…?” Angel enquired. “Willow, Lorne, can you patch up Xander and Gunn while Giles and Wes rescue the Pattersons from their – protection spell?”_ _ _

___“I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventually.” Giles looked a lot less confident than he was trying to sound._ _ _

___Wesley’s smile was also a little sickly. “Yes, how hard can it be?”_ _ _

___Rolling her eyes, Willow walked into the kitchen, picked up the spell book, turned to the right page and put it in Giles’s hands, pointing to the spell so there could be no chance of mistake._ _ _

___“Right.” Wesley looked over Giles’s shoulder. “Oh. It can be incanted in Latin or Geshundi. I wonder if that means the same spell evolved independently in two completely different cultures or if the Geshundi version is actually the root of…”_ _ _

___“Paying customers trapped behind a magical force field, Wes.” Gunn patted him gently on the shoulder. “Maybe you want to save the evening class for later? Especially as, if I’m not very much mistaken, that little kid really needs to barf.”_ _ _

___Wesley darted an anxious look at the small boy who did indeed look a little green around the gills and said to Giles, “Right, Latin version it is then? Would you like to…?”_ _ _

___“Absolutely.” Giles looked under his glasses, murmured a few words under his breath, said, “Well, it seems straightforward enough…” and then advanced towards the Pattersons rather in the manner of Xander about to take an exam for which he hadn’t studied._ _ _

___“And when you’ve done that you need to work out how to give Willow her voice back,” Xander called after them._ _ _

___Willow nodded emphatically. Xander put an arm around her shoulders and murmured in her ear, “Given the way we’re entirely surrounded by fearless demon hunters, I’d kind of like to be out of earshot of everyone else when I blub like a girly over the fact that I really really hurt.”_ _ _

___Willow tightened her grip on him sympathetically, mouthed the word ‘ice cream’ at him and he nodded. “You have the best ideas,” he told her. “First bandages, then painkillers, then, I think unfathomably large cartons of ice cream.”_ _ _

___They followed Gunn out into the corridor, where he also leant back against the wall, checked that there were no vampires, Slayers or Old Ones looking his way and then wrapped his arms around his ribs. “Damn! That hurt.”_ _ _

___Xander, still supported by Willow, reached out and they touched knuckles. “Kind of sucks to be human around here somedays, huh?”_ _ _

___“Damned straight.”_ _ _

___Lorne offered Gunn his arm, saying, “And getting out of the limousine now is the famous entertainer Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok clan, he of the golden tonsils, squired for the evening by his handsome escort, Charles Gunn, attorney at law.” As they all looked at him, he shrugged, “You cling to your Skilosh-gloop spattered reality and I’ll enjoy mine.”_ _ _

___Sighing, Gunn leaned on Lorne, allowing the demon to help him limp back towards the lobby. “I hate Skilosh. Every time one of them sticks their nasty pointy tongues out, the back of my skull starts itching.”_ _ _

___Lorne looked across at Willow. “I know you can’t answer me in words, sweetpea, but a nod or a shake of the head will suffice. Did Wesley handle himself in there like a wet behind the ears new Watcher or a guy who’s been fighting demons for the past six years?”_ _ _

___Willow pulled a face which she hoped indicated something in between, steadying a slightly staggery Xander as she did so._ _ _

___Lorne sighed. “I was afraid of that.”_ _ _

___“Afraid of what?” Gunn clasped a hand to his aching ribs. “Wes can handle himself. Hell, he was still fighting from a wheelchair, and one thing you can say for post traumatic stress disorder – it teaches a guy good self defence.”_ _ _

___“Wesley _could_ handle himself – and I so wish you hadn’t phrased it like that – before he had his memory wiped. But fighting isn’t just instinct, sugarplum, it’s learned responses, learned from being in the same situation in the past. Situations Wesley now doesn’t remember. Maybe he’s not falling over at the first punch these days, but that’s because he’s amongst friends and he’s not so worried about making an impression he can’t remember what he learned at Watcher school. But any way you look at it that’s still five years of hard won knowledge tossed away because Angel can’t deal with his part in driving Wesley crazy.”_ _ _

___“It’s Wesley’s decision.” Gunn shrugged._ _ _

___“Yeah, well it’s the _wrong_ decision, and it would be nice if some of you fearless demon hunters got off your fearless demon hunter tushes and told him that.”_ _ _

___“But, Fred –”_ _ _

___“Isn’t someone the Wesley I knew would ever want to forget. I don’t care how much pain it cost him to lose her, he still wouldn’t want to have her wiped out of his mind. Or Cordelia either. Tell me the truth, Gunn, would you want it to be as if Alonna never happened?”_ _ _

___Gunn opened his mouth, closed it again, sighed and then said, “No.”_ _ _

___“So, are you going to tell Wesley that or just let Angel go on having the good intentions that take us all to hell?”_ _ _

___“Right now I’m kind of busy trying to decide whether to pass out or throw up. Can it wait?”_ _ _

___“Sure. Why not? It’s only Wesley’s life we’re talking about here.” Lorne looked at Xander and Willow. “Why aren’t you two backing me up?”_ _ _

___Willow hurriedly pointed to her mouth and Xander said, “We’re with you in spirit, Lorne, just not in an actual – talking to Angel about what an asshole he’s being way.”_ _ _

___“I miss Cordelia,” Lorne sighed. “She would have had this situation sorted out in a heartbeat. Angel and Wesley were way more scared of her than they are of me. I need to work on that.” Willow nodded at his horns encouragingly and he conceded the point. “I know. You’d kind of think they’d give me the edge over a cheerleader when it came to scaring the nijinksy out someone, wouldn’t you?”_ _ _

___“I blame Connor.” Gunn winced and Willow noticed that the hand he had clasped to his ribs was stained with blood. “If he’d punched Angel on the nose the first day he got his memories back instead of going around being the poster child for therapy-through-amnesia, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”_ _ _

___“Good point.” Lorne looked thoughtful. “Very good point indeed, my lamb.”_ _ _

___Gunn glanced at him. “Why is that not reassuring me?”_ _ _

___“Because you’re still thinking we just staggered out of a demon fight where we barely managed to keep our soft tissue inside our skins. If you’d just accept that we’re attending the premier of something wonderful – like, I don’t know, a Star Wars prequel that actually _has_ a script, or say, my about to break all box office records starring debut on Broadway, think how much happier you’d be feeling right now.”_ _ _

___“You promising me you’re not going to have any contact with Connor, on account of Angel probably killing you if you even think about it, _that_ would reassure me.”_ _ _

___Willow looked at Lorne’s face and wondered if a pacifist anagogic demon had ever looked so inscrutably determined before. He said: “If there is a purpose and a pattern in life – and I’ve kind of spent every waking minute since I first arrived in this miraculously music-filled world assuming that’s the case – then I was sent here for a reason and that reason was to do with helping people find their path. Something it’s been a lot harder for me to do since you gumballs got my club destroyed and first Jasmine and then Angel messed with my empathy vibe. But if getting out of Wolfram & Hart has given us anything, I like to think it’s a second chance to get back to what we’re meant to be. And in my case that means I help people find their path. I don’t stand back and drink too many cocktails while their well-meaning friends shove them off that path and then padlock all the gates so they can’t get back onto it again. Capeesh?”_ _ _

___Gunn sighed. “Tell me one thing to do with Connor that ever ended well?”_ _ _

___“But nothing’s ended yet, cinnamon roll, that’s kind of the point. This is a story that’s still unfolding.” Lorne looked at Willow compassionately and she realized in that moment that he knew so much more about her than she’d ever realized; how it had felt to lose Tara and how the guilt was always with her for what she’d done to Warren, to Giles, to the world. “We’ve all reached those ‘stop’ signs that make us think we’ve hit an ending but human lives aren’t a three minute pop number that never made the hit parade; they’re all grand opera, even the quiet lives, and let’s face it, who does grand opera better than us?”_ _ _

___Xander looked at him closely. “You’re saying Angel is acting like we’re on the third act when for all we know…”_ _ _

___“We’re barely out of the overture.” Lorne nodded. “There’s way more of this to play, my sweets. And meanwhile everyone’s acting like Wesley’s life up to now doesn’t count for anything. That it’s something better discarded. How would you feel if your closest friends preferred it if you didn’t remember them?”_ _ _

___“Under the circumstances, I think I’d understand that they were acting out of love,” Xander said quietly._ _ _

___“But wouldn’t it make you feel kind of empty inside?”_ _ _

___“In the end I suppose it would.”_ _ _

___“Well, I’ve done empty inside. We did a long cold year of it in Wolfram & Hart. I’m way past wanting to go there again. I had to go back to Pylea to know it wasn’t a place I ever needed to visit again, and maybe that’s all Wesley needs from his memories, to move on from them as fast as possible, but they’re his and he has a right to them, and with your help or without it, I’m going to find a way to get them back. Angel’s so in love with self-sacrifice he’s giving up his closest friend just because it’s what hurts the most. But Wesley isn’t some crucifix he needs to hold onto so he can feel it burn his skin. Right now, he’s so afraid of hurting the people around him any more that he’s hurting the one who trusted him the most. I know I’m right.”_ _ _

___“What if it makes him crazy again?” Gunn pressed._ _ _

___Lorne shrugged. “We take care of him until he’s through it but at least when he comes through it he’ll be Wesley again. The real Wesley not this Wesley-lite version.”_ _ _

___“I don’t know…” Gunn shook his head. “He’s okay. He’s…happy. He’s functioning. He’s…”_ _ _

___“Going to die never remembering the voice of the woman who loved him.”_ _ _

___Gunn conceded defeat. “I’ll do anything except agree to contacting Connor.”_ _ _

___“Good.” Lorne nodded decisively. “Because the first thing we need to do is contact Connor…”_ _ _

___***_ _ _

___Wesley hated this. He felt he should go in there and break it up, have his say; but he didn’t really have a say. Despite everyone saying that it was his decision, his was the least informed opinion in the hotel._ _ _

___He looked across at the office and it was just the same: Angel sitting behind that desk looking like a stag at bay and everyone else throwing accusations or opinions. Giles was speaking quietly every now and then; reasonable interjections; but Lorne was passionate, Illyria was cutting, and Spike was heated. All debating his – Wesley’s – sanity or lack thereof, past, present and future. And yes, he knew his current life was a lie, but if the truth would undo him what else was there for him? Sanity and a lie or insanity and the truth; those seemed to be his only two choices. And he didn’t want to be crazy. He didn’t want to lose control again. It sounded as if he’d driven off the mental health road more than once in the past: bludgeoned Lorne into unconsciousness when he cracked up with the strain of his self-imposed mission to kidnap Connor; climbed into a whisky bottle and an enemy’s bed after the others had exiled him; fallen apart when Fred was dying so completely that he’d kneecapped one man, fatally shot another, and then stabbed a third._ _ _

___He didn’t see how they could blame Angel for doing what in the circumstances seemed to be the decent thing – protecting his friend from dangerous knowledge that might unhinge him in the present as it had unhinged him in the past. Wesley felt panic-stricken whenever he thought about those other memories coming back. He didn’t want them and he didn’t need them. He was fine like this. Why couldn’t everyone else see that he was fine like this? At the same time he knew he was probably behaving like a coward, but he could make as good an argument for how little use he was insane as he could for how reduced his usefulness was by his impaired memory. If he didn’t know as much as the Wesley they had known then he would do more research, study those languages he had mastered in the past five years and learn them again. If his fighting skills weren’t as honed as they had apparently been in the past, well, then he could study those too. Illyria or Spike or Angel or Gunn could train him. Perhaps he wasn’t the most coordinated person in the world, but he was a quick study. He would work hard. Get better. But he didn’t want to lose himself; didn’t want to be the crazy Wesley he saw reflected in their eyes sometime. The one who had snuggled up in bed naked with a vampire and seen nothing odd about it._ _ _

___Glancing across at Angel again, he felt his heart twist in sympathy as he saw how beleaguered he looked. Trying to defend himself against accusations of high-handedness, arrogance, being a bad friend._ _ _

____For Christ’s sake, the man followed me into a hell dimension!_ _ _ _

___Wesley winced internally. He didn’t want to feel this passionate about his friendship with a vampire. He didn’t want to hate it when Angel looked like that; feel like ants were walking on his skin when people criticised him. Didn’t want to feel empty inside because there was so much sorrow in Angel’s eyes, that dogged persistence that he only wanted the best for his friend; the friend he had already cost so much._ _ _

___“This isn’t about your guilt, Angelcakes. This is about Wesley being everything he can be.”_ _ _

___“I just want him to be sane. Why is that so much to ask? Don’t you remember the way he was before?”_ _ _

___“Sure I do. Jittering about in his office like a bug on a hot plate obsessing over every thing he could find on her blueness over there. No shoes. No shower. Not much in the way of shaving and wearing clothes that I swear had been at the bottom of his closet for half a decade. But he was still Wesley.”_ _ _

___“He was crazy!”_ _ _

___“So crazy he managed to work out a way to draw off all that unstable power from Illyria without upsetting the fabric of this world or damaging her. So crazy he managed to find a way to close that opening to a demon dimension without it costing a single human life except his own. He still functioned better than most people do at the top of their game.”_ _ _

___“He was in despair. He had nothing left to live for. He got up and kept breathing because he thought committing suicide was the coward’s way out but that was the only reason he hadn’t tried a paracetamol chaser for all that Laphroaig he was glugging down. I can’t watch him go through all that grief again.”_ _ _

___“It was Lagavulin.” That was Spike, looking up from lighting a cigarette._ _ _

___“Who cares?” Angel demanded testily. “The point is he was practically bathing in the stuff.”_ _ _

___Wesley winced, hunching his shoulders against the beat of all that emotion, only separated from him by a much too thin wall of glass; a flimsy wooden door. So much for him not being a dipsomaniac. A drunken murderous madman who tip-toed about through piles of research notes in his stockinged feet, listening obsessively to the tick-tocking of his watch, forgetting to sleep or to eat or drink anything that hadn’t been matured in a peat-stained barrel for twelve years. What was so wrong with the way he was now that they wanted to return him to that?_ _ _

___“I miss my friend.”_ _ _

___He jerked his head up in surprise, thinking Gunn was talking to him until he realized the man was gazing at Angel._ _ _

___“I miss him and I want him back. But if I really thought this was best for him, I’d agree with you in a heartbeat. The fact is, I don’t. I’ve thought about it over and over and I don’t think that if Wesley was able to make this decision this is the decision he would make.”_ _ _

___“He is able to make it and he has made it.” Angel sat up straighter. “Cordelia accused me of raping the memories of friends who trusted me, and she was right. That’s what I did. I signed in blood to say it was okay for Wolfram & Hart to let Cyrus Vail and a host of other warlocks change all your memories. I did it and I’m not even sorry I did it as it meant my son got to grow up with what he’d always wanted – a family. It meant Connor got to go to Stanford instead of dying in a shower of other people’s exploded body parts. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know that what I did was wrong. That I had no right to do it. That I don’t acknowledge that it did you all harm. I know I played a part in ripping the equilibrium out of his world. For the first time in a long time Wesley has found a place of balance. He’s stable. I’m not going to be the person to mess with that again.”_ _ _

___“The point is you don’t have the right to make that decision for him.”_ _ _

___“I didn’t. He made it himself.”_ _ _

___“He made the decision based on information you’d given him, Angel.” That was Buffy._ _ _

___“I told him the truth.”_ _ _

___“But there are so many truths,” Giles said quietly._ _ _

___Wesley decided he couldn’t take any more of this. Couldn’t take being discussed like this or seeing Angel look so harassed and unhappy, so angry and defensive and so unbearably sad. He picked up his coat and walked out. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, he just knew he needed to be outside of the hotel._ _ _

___***_ _ _


	3. Chapter 3

Connor felt the unease growing as he walked towards the hotel. Lorne had said to him ‘I know what I’m asking’ but he didn’t think he did. And he wasn’t at all sure that what Connor had to tell them was going to help them out either. Or that Angel would listen to what he had to say. Lorne had said he didn’t want to tell him anything about the current situation so Angel couldn’t accuse him of trying to influence him. He just wanted Connor to come to the hotel and join in the discussion.

“I know you have another family of your own now, pumpkin, and we’re all nothing other than happy about that, but you used to be a part of this family, too, and you’re one of the few people in this world whose opinion might carry some weight with your… with Angel.”

It was difficult to describe how it felt to be Connor Reilly post the smashing of the Orlon Window. Mostly, he felt unchanged. He might intellectually know that his memories were a lie, but he felt it was almost irrelevant. Twice now he had been on the inside of a shared lie and both times he had preferred that false reality to the true one.

He remembered being the other Connor, the only one these people really knew, but when he had those memories now, saw those scenes, it didn’t feel like him, but some person he’d watched. He pitied that Connor. He was such a screwed up angry kid; desperately trying to find his place and purpose in the world and failing every time. Connor knew his place in the world. He knew how it felt to be surrounded from birth by people who loved him; to know absolutely the difference between right and wrong and to know that one was on the side of right, had never strayed, been barely tempted by wrong. Now, when he remembered the other Connor, he knew that there was a road he could have taken that led to being an accessory to murder, to mass brainwashing; that need to have a family twisted into something dark and corrupting. In that he could see there was a parallel between himself and Angel and he pitied the vampire who was his birth father for it, because he remembered how that felt, to want to keep your family, or at least _a_ family, at all costs, to be prepared to do almost anything to keep it intact, and the murderous rage you felt towards those who fragmented it. He had hated them all so much for ruining what Jasmine had almost achieved. 

There were so many things that made him flinch; things that if they truly _felt_ like reality he was not sure he would have been able to bear; but the fact was they felt like dreams. Weeping over Holtz. Sealing Angel into that coffin. Being tazered by Fred. Sleeping with Cordelia. Killing Jasmine. His fear that he was connected to the Beast. His astonishing lack of empathy. He could remember that so clearly, feeling so disconnected from the rest of the human race, not understanding how they functioned. He looked at himself as he had been then and saw a clinical case, a person in pain that now he would want to try to find a way to help; someone so callous and confused and angry and naïve all at once. And just wanting all the time to find a family and a cause and a way that he could settle into doing good. The others had felt so distant to him; their problems and their pain irrelevant, because they were all grown ups who ought to be doing better and instead they kept screwing up and screwing up and screwing up, and they didn’t have the right to be that useless when the world needed them to just function properly, to make good decisions. 

He winced. It had crystallized in the end into an acceptance that he would have had a family if he’d only been able to stay with Angel, the way he was meant to, in the first place. He wondered if Wesley had realized that was why he’d wanted to hurt him so badly. Feeling the man’s hand touching his cheek with such sorrow and compassion for him, welcoming him into the fold of the dispossessed; another poisoned chalice he’d wanted Connor to drink from because the stupid Watcher still couldn’t accept a happy lie. Twice Wesley had ruined his life because he had to cling onto reality at all costs. So what if a prophecy said Angel was going to kill him, they’d all been happy, hadn’t they? Why not just wait and see if it happened and until then forget about it; enjoy the moment instead of always agonizing over what was going to happen next. He would have been brought up among a family who loved him; with the father who had cared for him so unconditionally that in the end he’d given him up. Connor remembered throwing Wesley into that wall, backhanding him and wanting to just go on hitting him, pounding him through the floor for what he’d done to him. He’d felt it then, already, the stirrings of doubt they’d released; feeling time running out; knowing they were going to find a way to spoil it all somehow, because they couldn’t let the world be saved by any method but their own. And at the same time yearning for that lost might have been; the life he should have had being raised by Angel that Wesley had also stolen from him.

Connor looked up and realized the evening was much darker than when he’d stepped off the bus. He’d used to prowl these streets in darkness with a stake in his hand; wanting to save life and take it at the same time.

Connor sighed. “Sheesh, I was a screwed up kid.” It felt so long ago and so emphatically something that had happened to someone else.

As he said it, he looked across the street and saw the man he’d just been thinking of; the man who had, through good intentions, poor judgement, and a too-determined need to cling onto the truth, wrecked Connor’s first chance of a happy life. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. 

The last time he’d seen Wesley it had been at Cyrus Vail’s place. Connor had stumbled out of that encounter with Sahjahn to find Wesley looking pretty much how he felt; only worse. Wesley had still been on the floor, flinching like someone who’d just been hit by a lightning bolt. He’d looked up and given Connor a look of abject apology and Connor had realized that it must have been something that Wesley had done to set off that landmine in his mind, all those memories Angel had paid so much to seal off from him. Memories which had saved his life and could have destroyed it in the same instant. Seeing the way Wesley was shuddering he’d realized that his weren’t the only memories that had been altered and whatever Wesley had done to him he’d just done something equally destructive to himself. The old Connor would no doubt have said that was the story of Wesley’s life – misguided interference that always ended up wrecking both of their lives. This Connor could acknowledge that even if he, Connor, was still the centre of his own life, that didn’t make him the magnetic core of anyone else’s existence. Except possibly Angel’s. Gunn and Fred had told him the story of what Angel had done to Wesley for his part in kidnapping him. They’d been trying to reassure him that the father they thought he was helping them to look for was really worthy of his love. So worthy that he’d tried to kill a trusted friend who had risked his own life and nearly lost it saving a baby from a vampire. Not that he’d cared about Wesley at all; or what it must have been like for him lying in that hospital bed unable to move or cry out while a friend pressed a pillow over his face. That hadn’t been relevant or important; all that mattered was that there was more proof that Angel was evil, a danger to humans, and deserved to rot under the sea.

Connor automatically crossed the road, wondering why Wesley was going up that alley when it had always been dangerous, especially after the sun went down. Did the man have a plan or just a death wish? Frowning, Connor increased his pace. 

Wesley was wearing jeans and a sweater, carrying that shoulder bag of his, looking the same but not moving the same way; not moving like someone should in a place where they were offering themselves as a vampire happy meal. Perhaps it was a ploy; perhaps Angel, Gunn and … no, there was no Fred any more; there was just Illyria, that strange, hot, demon in leather who had made Connor’s teenage hormones stir instinctively. She was nothing like as hot when he thought of Fred being dead because of her. Poor Fred. She had just wanted them to be one big happy family too. Had felt so betrayed by that other Connor’s deception. So strange that with so many people who had wanted nothing more than to be part of a family unit and do good that they had so consistently ended up hurting one another, ripping the family apart, and doing bad.

Connor kept following Wesley from a safe distance, not wanting to interfere with a trap if Wesley was meant to be the bait, but also just wanting to be sure that the man wasn’t truly as clueless as he appeared. Wesley was gazing up at the walls of the alley as if he’d never seen the place before. He stopped and turned a circle slowly, looking as if he was lost. Not the best bait in the world if the vampires were locals as they would probably know who Wesley was; but then vampires tended to have their own battles. Perhaps previous nests had been driven out and there were new ones in town. Wesley turned another slow circle, still looking up at the walls as if he was hoping he would recognize something in a minute.

Connor advanced slowly, frowning. Was Wesley acting or not? Because there was a vampire creeping along the top of that alley wall right now, and probably at least one other in the vicinity, and if Gunn and Angel were around they were hiding themselves too well for even Connor’s senses to pick them up. He really didn’t want to ruin some carefully laid plain of Angel’s but on the other hand, what if Wesley…?

As he was thinking it, the vampire dropped like a rock onto Wesley, who if he was acting surprise at being grabbed and hurled into the wall should give up the day job at once and move straight to Hollywood as he would be a shoe-in for an Oscar. Plan or no plan, Connor was already running. Wesley had crumpled down the wall and was now sitting on the ground, dazed and bleeding, and as the vampire lunged at him, only put up an arm ineffectually to ward it off. Connor grabbed it by the back of the jacket and hauled it away from the human and flung it into the opposite wall of the alley, before turning back to shout, “Wesley!”

He was hoping for some kind of explanation but the man only looked up at him in shock, with not a glimmer of recognition, then pointed urgently behind Connor. Connor spun around and ducked at the same instant and the lead pipe swung over his head. He kicked the second vampire hard in the midriff and looked over his shoulder, still hoping for some kind of guidance from Wesley; but he was only trying to stagger to his feet, blood running down his head. 

_Blood trickling from where Connor had thrown him into that wall, that look of shocked betrayal on Wesley’s face because Connor had taken such obvious pleasure in hurting him. The feel of the knife slashing his chest. Wesley’s hand on his face. The sorrow and love in his eyes…._

“Look out!” Wesley pointed blearily behind him and Connor snapped back out of it, ducking and spinning again; taking a blow to the chin that sent him reeling backwards; Wesley automatically grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Are you all right?”

Connor looked over his shoulder. “Do you have a stake?”

Wesley blinked at him in confusion and then said, “Oh yes, wait…” He began to rummage in the bag he was carrying. Connor grabbed him quickly and pulled him out of the reach of the vampire with the lead pipe. “Duck!” he hissed at him. Wesley did so, but dropped the bag in the process. Connor wondered just how bad that blow to his head had been.

“I’ll get it…” Wesley sank down, scrabbling in the bag, while Connor spun and kicked out at the second vampire, before punching the first hard on the jaw to try to hold him off. It felt instinctive, like old dance steps he’d used to practice until they became second nature. He took a blow on the jaw that knocked him into the opposite wall of the alley, elbowing himself off the stones desperately as the other vampire swooped on Wesley again, body checking it hard away from the man on the ground. 

“The stake!” he shouted over his shoulder to Wesley as he slammed the vampire hard into the wall and kneed it in the groin. Cordelia had taught him that move. He remembered her teaching it to him. The vampire doubled up and Connor hastily ducked the lead pipe once again, before grabbing Wesley by the shoulder and hauling him up and out of the reach of the follow up swing. 

Wesley almost fumbled the stake again and then shoved it into Connor’s hands. 

“Thank you,” said Connor breathlessly, before shoving him hastily out of the way and spinning around. He ducked the lead pipe and jabbed the stake in low and hard, under the ribcage and up. Then he was spitting out a mouthful of dust and spinning around again to position himself between Wesley and the second vampire, which was advancing on him with a murderous look in his eyes. Connor jerked his head out of the way of a punch, kicked out hard, and as the vampire stumbled pounced on it, driving the stake into its chest. There was a horrible moment when it felt like real flesh, real bone; he even heard its breastbone crack, and then the point found the heart and there was the proof that this really was an undead thing he had killed. He stumbled backwards, waving the dust away and turned to Wesley in mild exasperation.

“Wesley, what were you thinking? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Wesley had a hand clasped to his bleeding forehead and was looked at him warily. “I – got lost.”

“How can you be lost?” Connor demanded. “You’re a block from the Hyperion.”

Wesley looked at the blood on his fingers. “My head hurts.” He sounded very young and a little plaintive.

Despite being half his age, Connor felt all his elder brother instincts kick in. “Are you going to pass out?”

“No.” Wesley gave him another wary look from under his eyelashes.

Connor sighed and took him by the elbow. “Let’s get you home. You do know Angel is going to be mad about you laying traps for vampires with no back up, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t. I just got turned around. I was trying to find the shop. Xander and Spike are always going to the shop. I wanted a bar of chocolate.”

Connor looked at his face to see if he was joking. “It’s the other way, Wesley. Up there.” As Wesley continued to look at him as if he’d never seen him before in his life, Connor frowned. “I thought you got your memories back. Don’t you know who I am? My parents came to see you at Wolfram & Hart, remember? I’m Connor.”

“Connor.” Wesley stared at him in horror. _So this is how it feels to be the family skeleton in the closet_ , Connor thought wryly. Wesley wasn’t actually making the sign of the cross but Connor might as well have been monkey’s paw boy back from the grave given the way Wesley was gazing at him. 

“It’s not that bad, you know. I don’t eat people. Despite being the biological son of two people who sort of…did.”

Wesley put a hand up to his head, swaying so much he looked as if he was going to faint, and Connor quickly grabbed his elbow again. “Easy, Wesley.” He looped Wesley’s arm around his shoulders, uncomfortably reminded as he did so of Wesley bringing Angel back to the Hyperion.

“But I… You’re the baby I stole… I’m so sorry for what I –”

Connor hushed him quickly. “We shouldn’t talk about this. Not without Angel – he doesn’t like me to…. You know how he is. He likes to keep it separate. Likes me to keep it separate.” _Likes to keep me separate from the rest of you so much he stole your memories to make that happen._

“I’m so sorry.” Wesley gave him a look of such wretched and guilt-stricken remorse that Connor stopped in his tracks.

“Look, I’m not into blaming anyone, okay? I like my life. I love my parents. I love my sisters. I’m grateful for what Angel did. It’s not like I don’t have my share of things to apologize for. Like hitting you so hard that time. Are we cool about that by the way?”

Wesley dropped his gaze. “I don’t – I don’t remember it.”

Connor frowned in confusion. “But you were right there when the Orlon window – I thought you got them back too? You mean, you didn’t recognize me? You didn’t know who I was?”

Wesley shook his head.

“But you met me at Wolfram & Hart.”

“I don’t remember that either.”

Connor steadied him against the wall. “Maybe I should take you straight to a hospital.”

“No, it’s… I didn’t remember before. There was a spell. There was a bomb inside me and Willow did a spell and I…I don’t remember the past five years. I don’t think I want to.” He darted Connor another look as if looking for guidance and Connor automatically tightened his grip.

He’d never really understood in his old incarnation why Angel acted so protective of these screwed up grown ups he’d collected around him. He’d tried to think of them as family, just because they were the only approximation he had, but once they’d decided to oppose Cordelia and threaten their baby they’d become enemies, only to become allies again once Jasmine had welcomed them into the fold, only for them to make themselves his enemies once again when they’d turned against her. He sighed, looking at Wesley’s pale unshaven face, getting it at last, how these people had been the kids Angel had before his real kid had come along and brought him so much joy and happiness, of course. Yeah right. Some memories were always going to suck. Wesley might be a grown up from Connor’s perspective, but without the shotgun and the designer shirts, he looked kind of skinny and vulnerable, not to mention in serious need of a babysitter before he was let out where the vampires lived again because his self defence skills seemed to have dropped about five thousand points. Connor took a handkerchief from his pocket, put it in the man’s hand and then gently clamped the hand over the head wound. 

“Still playing with the magic then?” He gave him an encouraging smile to show it was a joke, but Wesley just looked wary and bewildered.

Connor sighed. _Tough audience_. “Let’s get you back to the Hyperion so Angel can yell at you and…” He’d been going to say ‘And Fred or Cordy can patch you up’ but, of course, there was no Fred or Cordy any more. He flinched inside when he thought of Cordy. He tightened his grip on Wesley’s elbow and said gently, “Well, I’m hoping to be a doctor, so I guess this will be a good chance for me to practise. I’ve got to tell you, Wesley, the intern part of me is really hoping you need stitches because I’m not so good at those yet.”

This time Wesley seemed to get it was a joke because he managed something that was almost a smile. “How – comforting.” 

Connor smiled in relief that Wesley was looking slightly less jumpy and guilt-ridden. “They told you all about stealing me but they didn’t bother to tell you where the local store was, eh?” he observed conversationally. “Those people always had the oddest priorities.”

Wesley darted him another look and Connor tightened the grip on him gently. “Humour – it’s something we humans have. You should try it.”

And Wesley was looking a little less deer in headlights now, which was something. “Well, you know, I _am_ English.”

“Hey, no one’s judging you. Son of two vampires – son of two English people. Everyone has their problems.”

And that was an honest to goodness smile. “I thought you’d be…”

“Weirder?” Connor enquired. 

“More damaged.” 

Connor looked at Wesley and felt a twist of compassion for him so strong it actually hurt. “It’s a decision we make, Wesley. To be damaged or not. Last time I chose wrong. I got the opportunity to choose right.”

“What if life damages you beyond repair?”

Connor thought of how it had been to be him, crazy with loss, the world a ruined place again, no hope for anyone or anything, because people didn’t know what they had, didn’t protect who they loved, didn’t keep their families safe, didn’t know how lucky they were to have them in the first place. 

“You don’t let it.” He tightened his grip as Wesley swayed again. “You keep believing there will be something better and you don’t give into despair.” And then they were outside the Hyperion. He couldn’t help flinching a little inside as he looked at it. All the harm that had been done in here. All the anger and arguments and loss and pain. Lilah had died in here and Connor hadn’t cared that a woman who had been living and breathing a few minutes before had been lying there dead, bleeding from the neck his monster of a father had drunk from; he’d just wondered why it was taking Wesley so damned long to dismember her corpse. He winced as he realized that Wesley didn’t know about that any more. Only as something people had told him, presuming they had told him about it. He didn’t remember it, or her, presumably. He gave him what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Angel’s going to ground you for a month, you know that, right? And if Gunn’s in there, there’s going to be yelling. He was always yelling.”

Wesley looked nervously at the doors. “They haven’t… So far there hasn’t been… They yell?”

“Oh boy, yeah. Loudly. You want to think of that before you go wandering off into dark alleyways by yourself.” Connor opened the doors, calling out, “Anyone here?”

There had been noise coming from the office, but at the sound of his voice there was an abrupt silence, followed by the door opening and people spilling out. Angel had that expression that always made Connor hurt inside; all that anxiety and concern and terror and love in equal parts. Afraid that something had happened that was going to hurt Connor some more; all that longing for the son he had lost. Connor gritted his teeth, forced a smile onto his face and helped Wesley down the stairs.

“I found Wesley outside,” he explained. “He didn’t know who I was. Vampires were trying to eat him.” 

“Are you…?” Angel advanced towards Connor, still gazing at him as if he thought he might shatter into a million pieces, and then noticed who was with him. “Wesley? What? Vampires were what…?”

“English, what the hell were you thinking?” Gunn demanded.

Connor looked at Wesley. “Told you.”

“Connor, why are you here?” Angel frowned in bewilderment. “And, Wesley, why were you outside?”

“He was trying to find the store.” Connor helped Wesley over to the banquette and made him sit down, adding over his shoulder: “You guys told him about me and you didn’t tell him where he could buy a Snickers bar? Don’t you think that’s kind of mean?”

Angel crouched down by them. “Wes, are you…? How badly are you…?”

“I’m hoping he needs stitches,” Connor told the vampire cheerfully. “But so far it’s not looking too hopeful. I’ve got a horrible feeling some hydrogen peroxide will probably be enough.”

Wesley looked up at Connor. “I forgot to thank you.”

“That’s okay. Your horrified expression when I told you my name was thanks enough.” Connor rolled his eyes. “That was another joke. Did everyone lose his sense of humour while I’ve been gone?”

Wesley gave Angel an apologetic look. “I got lost. Connor saved me.”

“You did?” Angel beamed at Connor so proudly that Connor felt that familiar twinge of compassion for him. His birth father really was a dork sometimes.

Connor shrugged. “Hey, Wesley provided the stake. Can I play doctor now?”

“So, this is the chip off the old block, is it?” Connor turned to see the vampire Angel had introduced to him as ‘Spike’ looking at him warily. “Last time we met old broodypants didn’t tell me you were family.”

“It’s good no one’s treading on your head any more,” Connor told him cheerfully. “And I didn’t know I was family back then. Or the source of all woe and misery in the Angel Investigations world.” As they all winced, he sighed. “No one gets my sense of humour. Damp cloth anyone? I don’t get bleeding people to practice on that often.”

“You should move back in.” Spike shrugged. “We’ve always got them around here.” Angel looked at the other vampire in horror and Spike backed up with his hands in the air. “Just trying to lighten the doom-laden atmosphere. Excuse me for not breathing.”

Connor looked up to find the green-skinned demon putting a damp cloth in his hands. He realized he should have checked with him first whether he wanted Angel to know the real reason why he was here. He gave him an enquiring look, at the same time juggling those strange double memories he got when he looked at these people. “Thanks, Lorne.”

“I asked Connor to come here.” Lorne faced Angel defiantly.

The vampire was torn between looking at Wesley’s wound, gazing at Connor as if he thought he might evaporate, and taking in what Lorne had just said. “You… what…? Why?” 

Lorne had evidently expected anger but the confused accusation in Angel’s eyes seemed to upset him more. He sighed, “Angelcakes…”

“Hey,” Connor looked up. “Can I deal with my patient first?” 

As they all took a step back a respectful distance, he peered intently at the cut on Wesley’s head, sighing as his worst suspicions were confirmed.

“What is it?” Angel demanded anxiously. “Is his skull fractured?” Gunn was already reaching for the phone, presumably to call an ambulance. Connor smiled inside, because dysfunctional though these people would probably always be they seemed to have remembered the importance of acting like a family. He blinked in confusion as more people stepped out of the office, including two incredibly pretty girls, one blonde, the other redheaded. Oh, another memory. He knew the redhead. Not the blonde though. She was _really_ pretty. He gazed up at Angel fondly, the vampire darting worried looks at Wesley who was looking up at Angel with an expression on his face of undisguised apology. If Wesley had walked into the Hyperion with that look on his face a year ago, Connor suspected that Angel and Gunn would have forgiven him on the spot. There was definitely something to be said for new beginnings.

Connor finished dabbing at Wesley’s head and sat back. “Just my luck. Doesn’t even need stitches and no concussion either. That’s disappointing.” He squeezed Wesley’s shoulder gently. “Not that I’m blaming you. You gave getting yourself seriously injured your best shot.” He looked up at Gunn. “You are going to yell at him now, right? Because I promised him yelling.”

Gunn smiled at Connor, relief obvious on his face. “Damned straight.”

“I think you should ground him.” Connor looked at Angel. “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.” He glanced across at the two pretty girls again. “Is anyone going to…introduce me?”

Gunn looked at the blonde girl and then back at Angel. “Um…well… Connor? When you got that…make over, they fixed you having the thing for Angel’s old flames, right?”

“Not to mention the Slayer thing?” Lorne added.

As everyone looked at him, Connor glanced back at the blonde girl and felt the familiar stirrings of interest. He gave Angel a rueful smile. “I guess some things are constants in any reality.”

“Willow’s not a Slayer or Angel’s old flame,” Gunn nodded to the redhead.

“I remember her.” Connor put his head on one side. “You’re a witch.”

“Yes.” She looked around the assembled people with a warning expression. “And a lesbian. Who therefore doesn’t date college boys, even to stop Buffy doing it.”

“Cool,” he told her cheerfully, before turning back to Buffy like a compass drawn to magnetic north. “And you’re a Slayer? Like Faith?”

“Buffy is Angel _and_ Spike’s old flame,” Lorne said pointedly.

“She’s really pretty,” Connor observed.

Gunn sighed. “I guess some things really do never change.”

Buffy continued to gaze at Connor awkwardly. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Connor assured her, still gazing.

Angel gazed at him in disbelief. “Connor…?”

He grinned up at him. “Just reminding you it wasn’t all good times. But, don’t worry. I’m not here to mangle anyone’s psyche, just to help out with whatever problem it is Lorne thought I could help out with. And practice a little doctoring on Wesley here.” He wiped the last of the blood from Wesley’s face and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re good to be yelled at any time Gunn wants to make a start on that.”

“Perhaps Wesley could have a cup of tea first?” A handsome older man, bespectacled and formally dressed, moved in dexterously to pluck Wesley out of yelling range. He offered his other hand to Connor. “Rupert Giles, Buffy’s Watcher, a pleasure to meet you, Connor.”

“Connor Reilly.” Connor shook his hand firmly. 

Gunn stabbed a finger at Wesley as Giles helped him towards the office. “There will be yelling, English.”

Connor waited until Wesley was safely in the office and out of earshot then looked at Angel enquiringly. “What happened to Wesley?”

“He lost his memory,” Buffy said.

“No, I mean – he used to be good in a fight. Those vampires would have skinned him alive.”

Lorne held out his hands to Connor. “Thank you.”

Connor became aware of everyone looking at Angel accusingly. “Did I…say the wrong thing?”

“No, you said the right thing.” Spike nodded at Angel. “Broody pants here wants to keep Wesley in cotton wool cloud never never land.”

Angel gazed at Connor. “You agree with me, don’t you? That everyone deserves a second chance?”

Connor realized what he had been brought into the middle of and took a deep breath. “I’m thinking a cup of tea sounds like a good idea and maybe I should just phone my mom and dad to let them know I’ll be late home. I have a feeling this is going to take a while…”

***

Angel was explaining the situation to Connor, very carefully and at great length, and with a look in his eye that was making Buffy hurt inside. He was putting everything he had into trying to convince everyone to do something that was breaking his heart. It was hard to know if this was just a guilt trip gone crazy or if he honestly believed that to give Wesley back his memories was to condemn him to a padded cell. Wesley was looking deeply uncomfortable, squirming about in his seat and trying to think of somewhere to put his hands. He’d tried putting them in his lap, wrapping them around his chest, crossing his arms, until Giles had taken pity on him and given him a cup of tea to hold and sip. That had seemed to soothe him a little but it was still clearly not a fun day out for him to have his precarious mental health discussed in front of everyone; especially as he clearly couldn’t have felt saner.

Angel hadn’t wanted to drink blood in front of Connor but Connor had insisted, pointing out gently that the reason they’d called him in was because he wasn’t the Connor who couldn’t deal with Angel being a vampire any more, so it was okay for him to be a vampire. 

Angel didn’t look at Wesley as he said: “…I think what happens is that every time something happens – something life altering, some loss or grief or shock – you can’t be the person you were before it happened any more; you have to go onto the next place, be the new version of yourself. Except that happened to Wes too many times in too short a time, and he just jumped the tracks; couldn’t remake himself again that fast and that completely.”

“Maybe he was.” Gunn looked up. “He was just still in the middle of a transition when the Senior Partners decided to end the world. He told me he was trying to adjust. That all the research he was doing on Illyria – that was part of the adjustment. We didn’t see what he was like when we – after he took – you know, when he wasn’t here. I saw him the once and he was in pretty bad shape. Was drinking pretty hard, all angry and bitter and didn’t want anything to do with us. But three months later he’s bringing Angel home, isn’t drinking, can talk just fine, and has got himself new clothes, a new haircut and a new evil lawyer girlfriend.”

Angel glanced across at Gunn. “Well, if you think sleeping with Lilah is the proof of a healthy mind…”

“Just saying. Wes has been to the brink a few times and he’s always come back. Just because he hadn’t managed it before you went into that hell dimension doesn’t mean he wasn’t going to if you’d given him enough time. And with all the changes he went through some things about him always stayed the same. He was always a Watcher. He was always in love with Fred. And he was always ready to forgive you any damned thing you did to him.”

“He didn’t forgive me for the mind wipe.” Angel looked at Wesley sadly.

“No, he lost his trust for you then,” Illyria said, not without a hint of triumph. “Then he and I were allies against you as we uncovered your deception.”

“Yeah, for five minutes, Blue.” Spike looked up from his glass of bourbon. “And we both know he did forgive him cause I remember you bending my ear about it for an hour at least. Wesley’s idea of making Angel suffer for stealing his memories and lying to his face was to not tell him the truth about his plans for Illyria and to spend some time with me. As punishments go it wasn’t exactly up there with trying to make him eat a pillow, was it?”

Wesley shifted uncomfortably and took another strengthening sip of tea. Buffy felt sorry for him. She almost mentioned the hell dimension, feeling the need to remind people that if Angel had mistreated Wesley on occasion over the years, it wasn’t a one-way street when it came to their friendship. Angel loved Wesley. That was the problem. He was so afraid of hurting him again, of not protecting him, of letting his own need for his friendship overwhelm Wesley’s need to be protected from his past mistakes and sorrows that he wasn’t thinking straight.

Xander said, “Can’t we just keep this simple? It was wrong to take Wesley’s memories away. You shouldn’t have done it. I don’t see a difference between this situation and that one except that no one did it on purpose. He’s still left flying blind with no way of recognising old enemies, or old friends, and a fraction of the skills he ought to have.”

“I can study,” Wesley said quickly. “I can work on my research skills and my fighting skills. I’m sure Illyria or Angel or Gunn or Spike would…”

Giles put a hand on Wesley’s shoulder and gave Angel a look that spoke volumes. He said gently to Wesley, “The point is that you already have that knowledge, Wesley. You’ve already worked very hard to attain it. It’s locked up inside your mind right now.”

Angel turned to Connor in desperation. “Connor, tell them it’s better not to have to… Not to have to deal with the things you can’t deal with.”

Connor sighed. “Okay. You all asked me here today so I could give my opinion and I suppose as someone who also lost his memory and got a second chance for a new life my opinion may be worth something. I’m grateful for what Angel did. I’m sorry that it hurt you guys. I wish he hadn’t taken me out of your minds as well. I’m sorry your heads were messed with to try to make me safer. I’m a saner, happier, better adjusted person today because I have a lot of false memories in my head that feel real to me and _are_ real to me. They’re my reality. I may know that Angel is my father but I also know absolutely that the man I call ‘Dad’ is my father, that I have two sisters that I love. That I have parents who love me. However, I’m alive right here and right now, because Wesley gave me back my memories of who I was before. If he hadn’t broken the Orlon Window thing, I’d be dead, because having strength and speed isn’t enough in a fight. You have to have the instincts of all those other fights as well.”

“Wesley couldn’t fight worth a damn when he came to LA,” Angel said quickly. “But he learned. He’s a really quick study and we’d all help him. We’d make sure there were people with him. There are more of us now. Before there was just me but now there’s Gunn and Spike and Illyria. We won’t let any harm come to him. And he’s not supposed to be a fighter anyway. He’s the guy who does the research and comes up with the plan. He can stay here in the hotel, in the office, where it’s safer.”

Buffy couldn’t let that go. “Angel, you know how many times Giles has been hurt over the years. If you’re out there fighting evil, people are going to target your friends to get at you. I’ve had it happen to me way too many times for comfort.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“And when Faith wanted to make you kill her, what did she do? Who did she choose? She didn’t tie you to a chair and slice you up with a piece of broken glass, did she? No, she tortured Wesley to get to you; to make you so angry you’d kill her for what she’d done to him. That’s what happens to Watchers. Take it from someone who has come in to find hers unconscious on the floor _way_ too many times.”

As they all looked at Giles, he grimaced. “Buffy does have a point, Angel. One can’t be associated with the Slayer or with a vampire with a soul on a mission to achieve redemption without becoming targeted by their enemies. The Mayor sent his minions to kill Willow, not Buffy. Caleb didn’t put out Buffy’s eye, he did it to Xander. You’ve admitted yourself that it was Cordelia and Wesley that both Faith and Vocah targeted when trying to get to you. If Wesley is in any way useful – and given the combined research abilities of the rest of you, I’d say he has already made himself invaluable – he _is_ going to be targeted.”

“I can fence,” Wesley offered tentatively. “And I’ll train. Every day. I can get better.”

“You _are_ better, Wes,” said Gunn gently. “That’s the point.”

“I don’t want to be crazy.” Wesley gave Buffy a begging look that made her want to feed him scraps. “I just want to be me.”

“But you’re not you, Wesley.” That was Connor and everyone looked at him in surprise. “You’re just parts of who you were. You’re missing half the things that make you – you.”

“So were you,” Wesley protested. “And you said yourself you are saner and happier.”

“I was raised in a hell dimension by a man I thought loved me, but who in the end loved vengeance more.”

Wesley said quietly, “I was raised by a man I knew never loved me. If you’re trying to say you didn’t have a stable happy home life at your back to help you through the crazy-making times – well, neither did I.”

“Holtz used to tie me to trees and leave me behind so I could hone my tracking skills.”

“My father used to lock me in the cupboard under the stairs with the rats and the spiders and no light if I made a mistake in a translation, or put my hands in my pockets, or didn’t stand up straight when I was talking to him, or broke anything, or dropped anything, or spilled anything, or did anything at all that wasn’t exactly what he told me to do, when he told me to do it, and not five minutes later. And in between locking me under the stairs and giving me extra lessons in everything for hours and hours and hours every single day, he told me that I was a useless hopeless clumsy idiot of a boy who would never amount to anything and would never ever make him proud.” Wesley had gazed unblinkingly at Connor as he spoke, but as he noticed everyone else’s shocked reaction, he hastily dropped his gaze, added rapidly, “I’m just saying that – I don’t have a lot of happy childhood memories to help me through the bad times.”

Giles looked across at Angel and said, “In case I didn’t mention it before, Angel, I take back what I said to you when you first came back from Askaroth. Wesley is better off here.”

Gunn said passionately, “Wes, man, I know you don’t remember, but you got your second chance already. It happened when you came to LA. You got the sister you never had in Cordy, and you got the brother you never had in me, and you got – I hate to admit it, but it’s true – the father you never had in Angel. _That_ was your make over. That was when you got the family you’d never had before who loved you and who you loved. Right now, everything in Connor’s life is rosy, it’s true, but it’s not always going to be like that. I hope it is but the truth is his mom could get sick, one of his sisters could get run over by a truck, he could start taking drugs and get in over his head. Shit happens. To everyone. You can’t just press the reset button every time it gets too bad. You’re way ahead of Connor. He’s where you were when you first came to LA. He’s got people behind him now who he knows love him and that’s going to give him the strength to get through the bad times. Well, so do you.”

Buffy looked at Gunn in surprise. She was so used to seeing Wesley as Angel’s personal obsession that she sometimes forgot how much these other people cared for each other as well.

Wesley darted a glance at Angel who gave him a tragic look in return. They spent _way_ too much time doing that. Buffy didn’t know whether to hug them both or bang their heads together. She gave Gunn an encouraging glance, wanting him to go on talking but he seemed to be done. She turned to Lorne and the green demon took a strengthening sip of something alcoholic before saying,

“Wes, my English muffin. You have Daddy Issues and no wonder; the man visited all his failures on you and set up your childhood like a crooked slot machine, so there was no way you could ever win. He programmed you for failure and the real miracle is that you overcame it as well as you did. But you did overcome it. You came to LA with nothing, knowing no one, and you made a success of your life here. Angel didn’t just offer you a job because you were hungry. Those of us who got all Lifetime Channel about you didn’t do it out of pity because Daddy never gave you anything on your birthday except more homework – ”

Lorne took another sip his drink, the ice cubes clunking “The point is, my lamb, that you overcame Daddy’s lessons in how to fail and you made a success of your life. And what Gunn said is absolutely true. I’m not saying that Angel should have won parent of the year for the way he treated Connor here when he was a teenage hellspawn, but he probably should have got a citation for the way he raised you and Cordy. He even obligingly went off the rails at just the right moment for you to realize that you could think for yourself, you could stand up to him, and you could do pretty well without him. And, cupcake, you did. I was right there when you reached that crossroads, the three of you. And you didn’t even hesitate. You staggered out of Caritas three drunken unemployed people with no path and by the time you’d shinned up that drainpipe you were Angel Investigations again. And you were the one who made that happen, right, Gunn?”

Gunn nodded. “Damned straight, Wes. You were the one who said we didn’t need Angel, we just needed to do what needed to be done. And we did it. The three of us.”

“You cast me out.” Wesley gazed at Gunn sadly. “You told me yourself. I screwed up. I ruined Connor’s life and Angel’s life. I robbed Angel of the only child he is ever going to have. I stole Connor’s childhood. And you all turned on me. And I believe that I loved you. I do. I even believe that you loved me. And I know that you must have been the first people who ever did. And I don’t know how I survived losing that. And I don’t want to remember how it felt.”

“The point is – we got through it.” Gunn leaned forward in his chair, willing Wesley to understand. 

Angel looked around at them all. “He lost Fred. He lost the woman of his dreams.”

Buffy gazed at Angel. “I stabbed the man of my dreams and sent him to hell for a hundred years. Life sucks sometimes. That’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean I would have wanted to forget you forever.”

“You lost Cordy, Angel,” Gunn pointed out. “But you’re still here. Two years ago, I thought if Fred ever left me I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning, well, she left me, she died, I played a part in killing her. I’m also still here and I wouldn’t want to forget a minute of knowing her. Are you going to put your hand on your heart and say you wish you’d never met her? She was the kind of woman you meet once in a lifetime and she chose Wes. And don’t tell me that doesn’t mean something because, damnit, I remember how it felt when she chose me. And aren’t you the guy who told Wesley that Fred was dead but he was alive and he needed to start acting like it?”

Angel grimaced at Wesley apologetically. “I was trying tough love.”

Wesley shrugged. “Don’t remember. Don’t care.” 

“But you should.” Connor rose to his feet. “Fred wasn’t just the woman you were in love with, she was your friend. She was a good person. So was Cordelia. The man I knew – he would have wanted to remember them.”

“That’s what we all keep saying!” Lorne threw up his hands.

Buffy looked up. “Is there anyone in this room who hasn’t been temporarily insane at some point? With grief? With anger? Who hasn’t done something incredibly stupid? Who hasn’t done things that they regret?” As no one put their hands up, she looked at Wesley. “That’s what life is, Wesley. It’s a lot of mistakes. Living with failure is what being a hero is all about.”

“I don’t want to be a hero. I want to be a Watcher and do some good. And I want to be sane.”

“You are a hero,” said Willow sadly. 

Illyria said quietly in a voice unlike her own: “I walk with heroes.”

Spike flinched. “Blue, don’t. Wes doesn’t know what you’re doing and the rest of us who do can’t take it. And if he gets his memories back you’re going to… you’re not going to do him any good.”

Illyria turned her Siberian husky eyes on Wesley. “Fred would want you to remember her.”

Wesley faltered at her glance. “I’m afraid to.”

“Your father taught you to be afraid of fear. Only when you ceased to fear it did you gain strength and courage.” Illyria turned to Angel. “You know this to be true.”

Angel said, “I can’t lose Wes. Not completely. Not like I’ve lost Doyle and Cordy and Fred… I know I’m going to lose the guy he was but this way at least he’ll still be alive. It’s like with Buffy, walking away from her was the hardest thing I ever did, but it was for her sake, so she could have a better life, so…”

“You are in love with sacrifice,” Ilyria told him. “If you stay on this path you will turn aside from everything that does not promise death.”

“That’s the path Wes was on when we went to Askaroth. He’s on a different path now.”

“This isn’t a path, Angel,” said Lorne shortly. “It’s a siding.”

“I stole Tara’s memories,” Willow told him. “I did what you did, Angel. I wanted everything to be the way it was before we’d argued, so I tried to steal her memories of the bad times but then everyone else got lost as well. We didn’t know who we were. Spike thought Giles was his father. Giles thought Anya was his wife.”

Angel gave Giles a look of horror. “You thought you had a vampire son and a vengeance demon wife? And people say I have a problem with self hatred.”

“We didn’t know Spike was a vampire,” said Giles wearily. “And he was wearing…tweed.”

“Tara loved me,” Willow added gently. “But she walked away when I did that. She wouldn’t come back until I’d learned my lesson. But Wesley…”

“Was apparently the doormat to end all doormats,” Wesley murmured.

Willow gazed at him compassionately. “Maybe you just knew that Angel loved you and for you that was enough.”

Buffy winced as she saw Wesley’s childhood hitting him again, the sting of cruel words and the emptiness where affection simply wasn’t, and then the terrible seduction of it, being loved unconditionally by someone noble and good and brave and true; the father he had never had, the friend he’d never made before. Wesley dropped his gaze, putting the tea on the desk so he could avoid looking at anyone. “Perhaps it was.”

“You did lie to him,” Spike offered. “Told him you were okay about killing Blue here, when you weren’t. That was a kind of a little rebellion.”

“And you made him have an office in the elevator,” Gunn added. “When he came to work for us. And you made him make you coffee.”

“I did?” Wesley briefly looked relieved and then guilty. He darted a glance at Angel. “Sorry.”

Angel turned to Connor again. “You wouldn’t want to be who you used to be, would you?”

Connor was still looking at Wesley. “Wesley, if you were you, you would be hating not remembering Cordelia and Fred and all the good times and the bad times. You know, I have a lot of respect for Angel, I really do, but his view of you and reality were always two different things. He thinks like a father. That’s good. You need a good father in your life because it sounds like yours was pretty much a wash out, but if you were in your right mind right now you’d know that Angel isn’t the one with the plans, you are.”

Wesley looked up at once, shocked by that accusation. “I’m the one who stole the baby, remember? The one who ruined your life? The one who thought it would be a great idea to take Angel’s soul. The one who set Faith on the path to murder and then nearly got her killed trying to capture Angelus.”

“You did capture Angelus,” Connor pointed out. “And Faith broke out of prison because you asked her to. Your plan worked. Angelus killed the Beast, Faith captured Angelus. And my life isn’t ruined. I like my life. I’m glad my father didn’t rip out my throat when I was a baby because Wolfram & Hart were spiking his blood. I’m glad I wasn’t blown up in an explosion because Holtz decided to put a bomb under this hotel. What I remember about that last insane year was that whenever no one else knew what to do next, you always had a plan. You’d turn up with information no one else had, find a way when no one else could. Maybe every single idea you had didn’t work out, but you still had ideas when no one else did. If you’re too afraid of making another mistake to ever try anything new how are you ever going to do any good?”

“If you consider your duty in this world to be to opposing evil and doing good then you should be prepared to accept any risk to do so, including the risk of insanity,” Illyria told him unblinkingly. “Why are you more afraid of your own past than you are of death or demons?”

“If your memory was working right now,” Spike added, “you’d know that Captain Forehead over there could never plan his way out of a cardboard box.”

“And if Cordy was here she would have made you get your memories back a week ago,” Lorne added. “And, trust me, sweetpea, you would not have been opposing her. Angel could flounce all he liked, when Cordelia said something was happening, it happened. You’d know that if you were in your right mind.”

Wesley automatically looked across at Angel and Buffy sighed, because the real irony here was that Wesley was always going to be Wesley; with memories or without them, he was going to be the same guy, having the same skills, the same virtues, the same faults; unfortunately he was probably going to keep making the same mistakes, too, not remembering having already made them once before. And he was too convinced of his own record as a failure to want to have that past back. Not unless Angel told him it was worth having. He had to hear this from Angel as well as the rest of them and Angel wasn’t going to say it. Angel was never going to say it.

“Okay.” Buffy got to her feet. “I’m really bored with this conversation now and I think we should put it to a vote. Anyone here who thinks Wesley needs to get all his memories back raise your hand.”

“Buffy…” Giles murmured. “I really don’t think that this is something that can be decided by a show of hands…”

Before Buffy had to go to the effort of thinking up an answer for him, Gunn, Xander, Willow, Lorne, Illyria, Spike, and with an apologetic look at Angel, Connor, had all raised their hands. Buffy turned to Giles. “See. It’s a landslide.”

“But…” Wesley began.

“Wes,” Buffy spoke sharply and was pleased to see that some residual training from Cordelia must have lodged deep as he jumped immediately. “Last time you hit bottom you were alone and you pulled through. This time there will be lots of us here to catch you. We _will_ catch you. Think of it like a trust exercise and just let yourself go.”

“But –” Wesley darted another look at Angel. “I –!”

Buffy glared at Angel. “Tell him you’ll catch him.”

Angel looked at her in dismay. “What if I don’t?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Where were you when they taught pep talks at leader school?”

“I don’t trust myself,” Angel insisted. “I was supposed to be the man who saved Fred from the monsters and in the end I was the one who carried her into hell. How can I tell him that I’ll catch him when I’ve dropped him so many times before?”

There was the crackle of something in the air, something dangerous and Willow rose to her feet, her red hair flickering in an occult wind. “No…!” she breathed.

Xander darted a look at her. “Will, what is it…?”

She was already chanting, holding her hands up, eyes closed, concentrating with all her might. She flung up her hands, shouted something Buffy didn’t understand and the crackling faded, but then she turned to Giles. “They’re coming back. Coming here.”

Gunn was already on his feet. “Katorakan. He said it wasn’t over.”

Giles stood up too. “How long will the barrier hold, Willow?”

“Maybe half an hour.” Willow looked across at Wesley. “I can’t maintain it for longer than that.”

“The demon courts are unstoppable.” Gunn gazed around the hotel anxiously as if he expected it to break through at once. “If they want to come here, sooner or later they will.”

Spike had already snatched up a sword. “Screw the courts. They already made their decision. That bastard can’t take him back to Askaroth.”

“He’s appealed.” Gunn looked across at Giles. “We have to prove our case all over again.”

“I don’t understand.” Wesley looked between them in confusion. “What does it mean?”

With a sinking heart Buffy realized that this wasn’t the same Wesley who had been claimed by Angel before. This was a Wesley who didn’t remember giving Angel an oath of loyalty or feeding him his blood. This was a Wesley who didn’t remember any of the things that had dissolved that brand of ownership upon his chest. “It means you have to get your memory back,” Buffy said. “And now.”

 

“I can’t.” Willow looked up at them all and Giles saw the signs of strain upon her face. “I mean – I can’t do both. I think I can maintain this barrier for an hour, which gives the rest of you an hour to come up with a way to convince the court that they shouldn’t allow Katorakan’s appeal. But I can’t do anything else while I’m doing this…”

Giles and Buffy exchanged a glance and he read his own fears on her face. If the thought of that traumatized scarred Wesley going back to a Hell dimension had been horrifying the thought of sending this innocent unworldly Wesley to such a place didn’t even bear contemplation.

“Giles, can you…?” Buffy’s eyes begged him to be able to do this.

Giles had to be honest with her. “Buffy, even given the seriousness of the situation, I don’t think I can. Wesley’s memory wasn’t lost as a result of a memory spell which could perhaps be reversed simply. It’s a side effect from a completely different spell formulated by Willow. Now, she and I have gone over the original spell in great detail, and with sufficient power, we think that it can be reversed, but only by Willow. She is essentially going to have to coax Wesley’s memory back and I don’t have the skills to do that.”

“What about the coven?” Buffy pressed. “They have great power, don’t they?”

“Not as much as Willow,” Xander answered for him, and the young man wasn’t letting his pride in his friend overwhelm his judgement, he was absolutely right.

“What Willow did – when she absorbed all that magic from those books, that makes her unique. There is no one else in this world with as much power as her. It’s just fortunate for the rest of us that she’s learned to use it for good. For instance, no one should be able to delay the coming of a demonic tribunal, but she’s doing it right now. It falls to the rest of us to come up with a solution.”

Wesley looked at Giles for reassurance and Giles had an uncomfortable image of a trusting Labrador puppy being thrown to a bunch of hungry hyenas. 

“He can’t go back there.” Angel’s brown eyes were wide with horror. He also looked at Giles as if only he could come up with a solution, and then evidently seeing the anxiety on Giles’s face, turned to their lawyer. “Gunn…?”

“Either he belonged to you before he went to that place or he belongs to Katorakan now.” Gunn clearly hated saying it as much as they hated hearing it. “Demon law is tricky but it’s also implacable. There isn’t a lot of wriggle room when it comes to human bondage.”

“We fight,” Spike insisted. “We’ve fought before.”

“Yes.” Illyria was already reaching for an axe. “We will destroy any who attempt to take Wesley from us.”

Gunn shook his head. “We’ve been through this and it won’t work. Demon courts can appear or reappear wherever they like. I doubt the judges are even going to be here in any kind of physical form. If they make their judgement then Wesley’s freedom is forfeit and he’ll be handed over to Katorakan however we try to stop it. I’ll just make the same argument we made before. Tell them Wesley pledged his loyalty to Angel, reaffirmed it in a blood oath, and Angel claims him as his property.” He winced apologetically at Wesley. “Wes, I know it sounds bad, but it’s the only reason you’re still here.”

“I know.” Wesley looked across at Angel. “Giles told me about it.”

“And do you understand it?” Gunn pressed.

Wesley looked mildly affronted. “I lost some of my memories, I know, but I don’t think I actually dropped that many IQ points in the process. I understand. If I hadn’t been deemed Angel’s legal property by the court the last time I would have been taken back to that hell dimension. Why do you think the appeal is likely to overturn the verdict of the court?”

“I’m not sure.” Gunn ran a hand over his shaved head. “I just have a bad feeling about this. Last time the proof came from you – you believed you belonged to Angel. This time…”

“I don’t.” Wesley looked across at Angel who sighed and looked tragic. Giles wondered if the vampire had the patent on tragic expressions.

“Angel was going to have you… The courts told Angel he should get you… Kind of a demon law identity chip, you know…”

“Branded with his mark of ownership,” Wesley said it calmly. “Giles told me about that too. Apparently I agreed to it.”

Angel grimaced. “I know it sounds bad, Wes, but…”

“Actually it sounds pretty sensible to me.”

Giles looked at Wesley in surprise and saw that they were all doing the same thing. Lorne put his head on one side. “Sweetpea, are you…?”

Wesley took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go back to a hell dimension and be…demon food. I want to stay here and…not be demon food.”

Giles said quietly, “Wesley, what are you saying?”

“The version of me I was before knew Angel better than I do. He thought it was a good idea. Of course, he seemed to be clinically _insane_. However, one thing I do have to agree with him about is that the kind of friend who will dive into a hell dimension to try to save you, when he’s already suffered in a hell dimension for a hundred years, is not the kind of friend that comes along every day. But I can’t say I – as a Watcher – exactly relish the prospect of giving over my legal ownership to a vampire, albeit one with a soul.” Wesley looked at Connor. “You’re his son, what do you think?”

“I think you can trust Angel.” Connor answered without hesitation. He looked across at his father. “I do.”

“Even though he stole your memories? Changed reality?”

“Because of those things, too. Because he makes mistakes and he’s sometimes _really_ immature for someone who’s had a bicentennial but he wants to do what’s right and he wants to keep the people he loves safe; even if it means giving them up.”

“Yes, I got that loud and clear.” Wesley looked across at Angel and took a deep breath. “Angel, I’ve been thinking about what you and everyone else has said, and I think you’re wrong. I think if I get my memories back I’ll be insane or I won’t, but I’ll be me. I think I’ve been cowardly about avoiding my past and I think most of the advice you’ve given me since I woke up has been faulty. I also think I’m probably more glad than not that I met you. Perhaps if and when I get my memories back – presuming I’m not being used as a demon barbecue instead – I’ll let you know.”

“This is very touching,” Giles said, “but we do have the small problem of you becoming the subject of a probably very ugly custody battle in the next thirty minutes.”

“I’ll make the case. Cite some precedents I can relate…” Gunn broke off as Wesley shook his head.

“They told Angel if he didn’t get me branded with his mark of ownership they were going to take it amiss, didn’t they?”

Gunn sighed. “Yeah, that was pretty much it.”

Wesley shrugged. “Then we’d better get on with it.”

Giles said hurriedly, “Wesley, you do realize that if you do this you will be conferring certain…rights of ownership to Angel that cannot be rescinded?”

“They’re not conjugal rights, are they?” Wesley looked across at Angel.

The vampire grimaced and everyone exchanged awkward glances. 

“They are?” Spike demanded. 

Gunn looked uncomfortable. “It’s demon law, Spike. It makes Wesley his property to do with…as he likes. Kind of like marriage before women had any rights, you know.” Everyone evidently did as Giles saw that he wasn’t the only one pulling a face at the prospect.

“And Angelus presumably? Wes would be his property too?” Spike rolled his eyes. “Find another way.”

“There isn’t one that I know of,” Gunn admitted.

Angel gazed at the Watcher. “You’re going to have to trust me, Wes. And – you don’t know me, I know – but I promise you I won’t – I would never…”

“But Angelus could and will.” Giles regarded Wesley levelly. “I’m not minimizing the gravity of your current situation, but as Spike has pointed out you will technically belong to Angelus should he re-emerge.”

“So?” Connor put in. “It’s not as if Angelus only…exercises his conjugal rights with people who belong to him, is it? Didn’t he pretty much exercise his conjugal rights with anyone who didn’t run away fast enough for about a hundred and fifty years? So, what difference does it make if Wesley legally belongs to him or not? He can’t kill Angelus anyway. The guy tried to choke him half to death just for the fun of it and Wesley was still all fired up to capture him alive. He let the guy throw him off some scaffolding rather than blow his head off.”

Wesley looked embarrassed. “Oh dear.”

“You’re a good friend, Wes,” Angel reassured him. 

“And you’re a bit of a doormat,” Spike added helpfully. 

“Not helping,” Buffy told him.

Wesley looked across at Gunn. “We were friends, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you know my legal situation better than anyone else?”

“Yes.”

“Well, as my lawyer what do you advise me to do?”

Gunn looked across at Angel, sighed, said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this but… I think you should trust Angel.”

Wesley nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to Lorne. “And you’re my spiritual adviser. The one who wants me to find my true path again. What do you think I should do?”

Lorne also glanced across at Angel, took a sip of his drink and then conceded the point. “Given my current state of semi-disillusionment with the prominent browed one, I’m also a little shocked at myself, but I have to say that I agree with Gunn. I have very little faith in Angel’s judgement these days, but I do have every confidence that he loves you. Of course, he loved you when he tried to suffocate you with a pillow and when he stole your memories so you may not think that’s worth a lot but…”

Wesley only nodded and turned to Giles. His expression had been calm when he looked at the other two but in turning to Giles there was a flicker of the fear he was feeling, the desperate need for advice, guidance, help, and, perhaps, affirmation and praise from someone who was probably as close to being a father figure in this situation as he was likely to get.

Angel looked across at Giles and his face fell. He clearly thought there was no way that Giles was going to advise Wesley to trust him and didn’t even blame him for it. “Are there any dimensions where demon law doesn’t apply?” he asked Gunn. “Somewhere we could portal Wes too until we can find another loophole or…”

“Giles…?” Wesley gazed at the man intently. “What do you think I should do?”

Giles met his gaze calmly. He still had doubts – and everyone in the room except Wesley knew just how little he liked this solution to the problem – but he was careful to keep them from his face. “The question, Wesley, is what do _you_ think you should do?”

“I think I should trust Angel,” Wesley answered so quickly that Angel positively gasped, despite not needing to breathe. “It feels natural to trust him. It feels safe trusting him.”

Giles smiled at him gently. “Well, then I think you should trust your own judgement. I, for one, have every faith in it.”

Spike got to his feet, tossing a cigarette onto the floor and treading on it. “So has anyone mentioned to Wesley in all this affirmation and bonding that it’s going to hurt like hell?”

“I know.” Wesley began to take off his jacket.

“You do?” Angel looked at him in confusion.

“I was researching it. The other me – the me I was before. The book was still open in the bedroom. I retrieved it a few days ago after Giles told me… I thought I should know what I had been so willing to let myself in for. Given how much it looked as if it was going to hurt I figured I must have trusted you a lot.”

“You did.” Angel gazed at him, obviously moved.

“Yes, well, I was naked in bed with you, for a start, that suggests a high level of either trust or infatuation and I’d rather think it was trust – just for the sake of my self respect.” Wesley led the way into the hotel lobby while the others followed him.

Giles lingered behind to look at Willow. She was clutching the chair on which she was sitting, face set, pale, sweat beading her brow. “Is there anything I can…?”

Willow looked up at him, and although he knew that she was a witch of incredible power, she still looked so very much like the little girl he had first met in the school library that his heart turned over with a mixture of love and concern for her. She managed a wan smile. “It would be nice if it didn’t take too long.”

Giles nodded. “We’ll be quick.”

Buffy squeezed Willow’s shoulder gently and said rapidly to Giles, “What does this ritual thing…? You know…? Does Wesley have to be naked?”

“Please god, I hope not,” Xander murmured. He pressed a kiss into Willow’s hair and said, “Do you want me to stay?”

She shook her head. “Just – try to make Wesley safe.”

“Only the area of his body that is going to be…marked needs to be unclothed, so, no, I see no need for nudity.”

Buffy grimaced. “That sucks.”

Xander glanced at her. “Can we _not_ talk about sucking in conjunction with Wesley being naked in front of me?”

“Still trying to hang onto those tattered remnants of heterosexuality?” she said sympathetically.

“Probably an exercise in futility in the present company but I’m still giving it the good old college try,” he assured her. 

“Given that all the women you’ve dated have been demonic fiends of some kind or Cordelia, I’d kind of think you’d want to just bow to the inevitable and set up home with Spike.” Buffy patted him gently on the shoulder. “Or there’s Andrew. He has such a crush.”

“Wow, a choice between listening to Spike talk about his old kills or Andrew telling me everything – and I do mean _everything_ – about 'Star Wars'. Who could ask for more? I’ll ask Willow to gay me up the second she’s finished holding off that mystical demon court.”

“Before you do that, Xander,” Wesley observed to him coolly, “Would you mind fetching the book that’s in my room?”

“If it means I don’t have to watch you taking your shirt off? Gladly.”

Spike and Illyria were circling Wesley curiously. The vampire put his head on one side. “So, where do you want it – out of sight or easily accessible? I mean, do you want to have to explain to every bird you meet that you’re actually the property of Broodypants now or would you rather wait until she’s really intimate with you and hope that if she’s got that far she’s not going to be put off by a little old tattoo on your ass?”

“It’s not a tattoo,” Wesley told him. “It’s a brand – a mystical and painful one. And I’d like it somewhere on my upper body, thank you, and nowhere that I need to…sit on. I’d also like a drink of something alcoholic, if you would be so kind. About 40% proof sounds about right.”

“Most sensible thing you’ve said all day.” Spike went to get a bottle of whisky from the private store he was guarding so jealously from everyone else.

Illyria put her head on one side speculatively. “It would be more seemly if Wesley were made my property. I outrank the vampire in every way.”

Angel opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of that plan and then turned to Wesley. “Your choice.”

“Doesn’t fly legally,” Gunn said at once. “Katorakan is appealing the decision the court made about Wes being Angel’s property. We’re trying to prove the court’s decision was the right one, not that Angel has sold him on to Illyria.”

As Illyria came as close to flouncing as Giles thought it possible for an Old One to do, tossing her blue hair back petulantly, Wesley looked a little plaintively at Angel who said hurriedly, “I wouldn’t do that. Sell you. Ever.”

“I’d get that in writing if I were you, mate.” Spike handed him a bottle of scotch. “There you go, Bruichladdich full strength. That’s about 57% proof. A few gulps of that and you’re not going to be feeling anything except possibly how cold the floor is when you keel over on it.”

Xander came down the stairs and handed the book to Giles. “Looks nasty,” he murmured, pointing to the illustration.

Giles grimaced. “Well, these old woodcuts were often rather… Do we even have these ingredients?” The illustration did indeed look both nasty and disturbingly homo-sadistic. Clearly these old woodcutters needed to get out more, or possibly got out rather too often.

Wesley nodded. “I must have asked Willow to get them for me. They were under the bed next to the book. Sorry, Xander I should probably have…”

“That’s okay.” Xander shuddered at the illustration in the book then gave Wesley a reassuring smile. “No problem at all. I’ll just go and get them.”

Angel looked at Xander in confusion and then worriedly came over to look at the book. He gazed at the illustration and then recoiled. “We can’t…”

“Angel, it’s just a brand,” Wesley told him quickly. 

“Burnt into your skin.”

“Kind of what a brand is, cheese scone,” Lorne pointed out.

Wesley unbuttoned his shirt and then looked around for a chair to hang it on. Connor took it from him gently, saying, “You’re doing the right thing, Wesley.” 

Wesley’s shoulder blades were painfully visible, as was his scar tissue, but Giles noticed that Buffy was eyeing Wesley’s leanly muscled torso appreciatively. He nudged her reproachfully and she did have the grace to look a little guilty. “I was only looking,” she muttered defensively.

“Could you do the right thing a little more quickly?” Willow called from the next room.

“We’re doing this as fast as we can, Will, I swear,” Buffy called back. She looked at the picture in the book and then pulled a face at Giles. “Icky.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t look so bad when the one being branded is…willing.” Giles looked at the bound figure in the woodcut, all twisting spine and screaming mouth, and hoped that it wasn’t quite as painful as it looked there.

Lorne was already busy mixing something with a mortar and pestle from his own stash of ingredients. “This is going to take the sting right out of it, sugarplum,” he promised Wesley. 

Gunn said, “Can I not watch?”

Angel looked at him in confusion. “Aren’t you going to do it?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Well, you’re the lawyer. Don’t you have to make sure it’s done…legally?”

“I’m not doing it.” Gunn stepped back and put his hands behind his back. “There are some things I don’t do to my friends when I’m sober. One of them we don’t need to talk about and the other one is branding painful mystical symbols into their flesh.”

“I thought Angel would do it.” Wesley looked at him in confusion. “Don’t you have to be the one to do it?”

Angel backed up so fast he stumbled and landed hard on the banquette. “Me? No! I’m not… I can’t… Anyway – Giles should do it. He’s the one with the magical skills.”

With a sinking feeling, Giles saw everyone turn to him with expressions of relief on their faces, and a muted chorus of agreement. Quickly scanning the spell for a get out clause, he felt the relief wash over him. “Sorry, Angel. It does have to be you. You’re branding him as your property.”

“Or I could have sold him to Illyria.” Angel darted a look at the Old One. “She’d take good care of him. And if she claimed her conjugal rights, I mean, would it really hurt…?”

“You’re pathetic,” Spike told him. “And what are you being so squeamish about anyway? You used to burn your name into people for fun.”

“And that would be why I don’t enjoy doing it now,” Angel told him through gritted teeth.

Wesley looked at him in disbelief. “Angel, what did you think this ceremony would entail?”

“I thought Lorne and Gunn could take you off to some magical tattoo store and then you’d come back with it on you and I wouldn’t have to watch it.”

“How can you be such a wuss?” Buffy demanded. “You used to eat babies.”

“But I don’t any more.” Angel darted a look at Connor.

“Could somebody please claim Wesley as his legally binding property?” Willow called from the office. “I can’t hold them for very much longer.”

Spike plucked the book from Giles. “Okay, enough pissing about already. I’ll do it.”

That was the impetus Angel needed, who immediately snatched the book from Spike and took a deep breath. “I’ll do it.” He turned to Giles plaintively. “What do I do?”

Spike smirked at Gunn behind Angel’s back. “He’s so easy sometimes.”

 

Giles held the Vessel of Ithinios – a rather tatty looking old cup of dubious provenance in his opinion – into which Angel had to drop the ingredients that Xander handed to him from the bag. 

“What’s with all the nails?” Xander enquired. “You’ve got half a hardware store in here.”

“They’re the iron from which the mystical…” Seeing Angel’s expression, Wesley said, “Um…object is going to be forged.”

Giles tried not to be distracted by Illyria pacing the room in agitation, murmuring to herself that it made no sense that she, a god king of the universe, should be troubled by a trifling injury to one so far beneath her. But the way she jerked her head round to gaze at Angel, hissing: “Why is the half-breed taking so long?” suggested those human emotions were still giving her a problem.

Spike was standing by with the bottle of whisky in the manner of a trainer with a towel outside a boxing ring, while Lorne was murmuring a quiet incantation over his own little after-branding ointment. Gunn had cravenly retreated to the office door where he could watch from as safe a distance as possible. Xander was handing over the ingredients as they were needed but looked as if he were regretting not following Gunn’s example, while Buffy was watching with a kind of fascinated horror.

Angel solemnly dropped in the nails – while Giles held the book under his nose so he could read the incantation from it as he did so – then added the various ingredients from their incongruously price-tagged clear plastic bags. Giles couldn’t help thinking that he and Anya had packaged their own eye of newt in a way that was considerably more in keeping with the solemnity of ancient magical rituals. These people had actually used dayglo orange price labels. That was just tacky.

“Is this one the sage or the deadly nightshade?” Xander enquired.

“Taste it and see,” Spike suggested.

Giles plucked the belladonna from Xander and handed it to Angel, before pointing wordlessly to the verse he was now supposed to be reading.

“You’re doing fine, Angel,” Wesley told him in a tone more appropriate to encouraging one’s first born to take his first unaided baby steps.

Angel snatched a breath he didn’t need, shook some belladonna into the cup and read the next line in a jerky toneless voice. Giles just hoped the mystical powers to which this invocation was being made weren’t too fussy about the performance skills of their magical practitioners.

Giles handed him the sage and pointed to the next line. Angel shook the sage into the cup, darted Wesley an agonized look, received an encouraging pat from Buffy, dutifully dropped a pinch of demon mercury onto the mix and then looked around for help.

“Your blood, Angel,” Wesley reminded him.

“Oh yes.” Angel hastily took the knife Buffy held out to him and slashed his palm, letting six drops of his blood sizzle onto the mix. He spoke aloud the incantation and immediately a flash of purple flame enveloped the ingredients. Giles thought, not for the first time, that the Latin constructions used by some of these ancient necromancers really were appalling, and wondered why they hadn’t just stuck to English. However, on looking into the bowl they all saw the ring that was in the place where the herbs and nails had so recently been.

“You have to do it quickly, Angel,” Wesley warned him. He turned around and knelt on the banquette, gripping the back of it tightly.

“Here, mate.” Spike held the whisky bottle to Wesley’s lips and the man gratefully gulped down two mouthfuls. Spike withdrew the bottle and looked at Angel. “Well, come on…”

“Angel…” Buffy nudged him hard. “Not wanting to sound all Nike here, but just do it.”

Angel grabbed the ring, slipping it onto his finger and turning to Wesley purposefully. At the sight of his bare back, he faltered again and Buffy nudged him again. “Quickly!”

Gritting his teeth, Angel pressed the ring into Wesley’s right shoulder. Wesley tried very hard to stifle his gasp of pain but Giles saw his knuckles whiten on the banquette as the ring burned its way into his skin. Giles could smell as well as hear his flesh sizzling and entirely sympathized with the way Xander had gone abruptly green around the gills. Even from his safe distance, Gunn grimaced in sympathy, while Lorne was hovering nearby anxiously. Then abruptly the ring dissolved into Wesley’s skin and Angel stepped back clumsily, saying, “Wes? Are you okay?”

There was a moment’s silence before Wesley unclenched his teeth enough to say, “Peachy.” He grabbed the whisky bottle from Spike and drank deeply before thrusting it back into his hand and gingerly straightening up, wincing as he did so. “Well, let’s never do that again.”

“I’m sorry, I…” Angel looked at him plaintively. “I didn’t want to.”

Giles peered at the brand on Wesley’s shoulder, disconcerted by its neatness. It involved some mystic sign that he didn’t recognize, a feathered detail from Angel’s own tattoo, and an ‘A’ in a vaguely Celtic style, all in an area the size of a two pound coin. “It’s surprisingly tasteful,” he assured Wesley.

Spike also looked at it curiously. “Yeah. Could have been worse. It’s not ‘Angel wuz here’ or anything.”

“It’s actually kind of pretty,” Buffy said. “In a – demonic brand of ownership kind of way.”

Wesley looked over his shoulder at Spike. “Can I…?” Spike handed over the bottle and Wesley took another deep swig before handing it back. “Lorne, did you say you had a…?”

“Right here, crumpet.” Lorne gently pressed down on Wesley’s head so he bent over again and tipped some of the purplish liquid in his mortar onto the mark. 

Wesley gasped and Spike quickly gave him the whisky bottle again. “Hang onto it, I would.”

When Giles looked around, Gunn was edging forward anxiously. “Is he…?”

“He’s fine,” Giles assured him.

“No thanks to the vampire!” Illyria strode over, darted a quick look at Wesley’s shoulder and then hastily averted her eyes. 

“All thanks to the vampire, Illyria.” Wesley looked around for Gunn. “Is this enough? Does this make me Angel’s property in a way that can’t be disputed?”

Gunn edged forward another couple of paces. “That was… I can’t take too much of that…”

“It’s just a legal procedure,” Wesley pointed out reasonably.

“A totally pervy one!” Xander countered. “We all saw the bending over, and the burning, and the holding down and the squirming, right?” Noticing that everyone was looking at him in confusion, he said, “I’ll just…check up on Willow.”

Gunn darted the briefest glance at Wesley’s shoulder and then grimaced and looked away. Angel rolled his eyes. “I had to do it and now you can’t even look at it? You’re the legal expert. Tell me if it’s…legal.”

Gunn risked another look, pulled a face and then said. “Okay, Wesley’s legal. I mean – legally yours. I mean – can we not go there?”

“Great legal expert you turned out to be,” Spike told him. “Lorne? Is it kosher? Or is Angel just going to have to do the Watcher right here?”

Lorne dabbed carefully around the brand. “It looks perfect to me.” He reached out and patted Angel gently on the shoulder. “You did good. Now perhaps you’d like to sit down before you throw up or pass out as I never think that’s a good look for a dark avenger.”

“Here you go, Dad.” Connor gently led him to the banquette so he could sit down next to Wesley. “Put your head between your knees. Although if you really want to faint like a girly would you mind cutting your head so I can practise my stitching?”

At the sight of Connor’s unrepressed grin, Angel straightened up, saying with some dignity, “There will be no fainting like a girly.” 

He and Wesley looked at one another and Wesley handed him the whisky bottle. “Thank you.”

Angel drank deeply and then handed it back. “You’re welcome.”

Wesley took another swig. “Let’s not go to any more hell dimensions.”

“Good idea.” Angel took the bottle from him again.

“That’s fifty dollars a bottle,” Spike pointed out.

“Bill me,” Angel told him, drinking deeply. “And then bite me.”

“You’re not even savouring it! You’re drinking it like it’s blended. Wesley, tell him to savour it. Or someone give the philistine a bottle of Bells. How about some blood? I’ll get you some blood.”

As Spike almost sprinted in the direction of the refrigerator, Angel handed the bottle back to Wesley. “This isn’t bad. Kind of mossy. Which kind is it again?”

“It’s from Islay.”

“I’ve been there. Did the Western Isles tour with Darla. Everyone tasted peaty and kind of salty. Made me thirsty.”

Wesley took another drink and then looked up at everyone who was hovering around them. “Oh, thank you all by the way.”

“Here.” Spike thrust a beaker of blood at Angel.

The vampire held onto the whisky bottle and sniffed the blood suspiciously. “It’s cold.”

“If you think I’m microwaving your blood for you, you wanker…” As Angel took another deep and unappreciative gulp of Spike’s single malt, he snatched back the blood. “Fine, just this once I’ll put it in the sodding microwave for you, but you owe me a bottle of Bruichladdich and I’m not settling for anything less than fifteen years old.”

Gunn looked at Wesley in concern. “You doing okay?”

Wesley nodded. “Lorne’s magic potion is taking most of the sting out of it and Spike’s whisky is dealing with the rest. I think we should tell Willow to let them come. Either this has worked or it hasn’t but there’s not really anything left to do now except find out and there’s no point in her exhausting herself any more than she already has.”

Giles hurried to tell her, and found Xander rubbing her back soothingly. She was clearly hanging on by her fingernails, the strain of warding off that court colossal. “It’s done, Willow,” he said gently.

She looked up at him. “I can’t seem to… If I let them through and they take him anyway…”

“They won’t.” As Giles said it he realized that he believed it. “Wesley has found his path again. And he is as much Angel’s Watcher as I am Buffy’s. Not just a calling but a life’s work. It’s a terrifying thought but it’s what we are. What we do.”

Buffy hugged him. “I like what you are. I like what you do. Except the nagging part. You could give that up.”

Giles smiled at her. “I think it’s part of my indefinable charm.”

Willow exhaled and sat back, Xander crouching next to her to steady her. “They’re coming,” she said. Xander took her hand in his and squeezed it gently.

Giles looked across at Angel and Wesley who were still sitting side by side on the banquette passing the whisky bottle back and forth, Gunn, Connor and Lorne clustering around them in concern, Connor peering at the wound with all a teenager and future doctor’s curiosity, Illyria gazing at Wesley with her habitual unblinking intensity, Spike hurrying up with the warm blood in the beaker, telling Angel what a wanker he was and how everyone was thinking it, he was just the only one that said it.

“Let them come,” Giles said. “I don’t believe any court, demon or otherwise, can lay any kind of claim to Wesley now. He’s made his choice. Those are the people and this is the place that he’s chosen.”

Willow sighed regretfully. “And I was hoping you and Wesley would…with the cricket and the umbrellas…”

Giles looked at her in concern. She seemed so disappointed. “What, Willow…?”

She darted a guilty glance at him. “Nothing,” she said hastily. And then the air rippled and crackled as the demon court landed in the lobby of the Hyperion.

***

Angel looked in the open doorway of the bedroom and saw Buffy bend and kiss Willow on the temple. The redhead gave her an exhausted smile, but she could hardly keep her eyes open, she was so drained from her tussle with the demon court earlier. 

He was feeling as churned up as a millpond at the moment. Still getting sick-making flashbacks to pressing that mystically white-heated ring into Wesley’s skin; feeling his flesh sizzle, the pain whiplash through him. Too similar to those victims he’d stalked in the old day, holding them still as he let them gaze into his yellow eyes, see those fangs that were about to claim their gulping throats, silent screams lodging somewhere in windpipes jammed with terror as he cut an upside-down cross into their cheeks. There were so many people who’d writhed in his grip in the past. Unlike Wesley, he could remember Angelus slowly choking him into unconsciousness; using him as a human shield, taunting Faith with her new weakness, wanting her to realize that this was what a conscience did to you, made you so much less than you could be; getting off on the feel of Wesley’s weakening struggles, his head on his shoulder as he slumped into dizzying darkness. And Wesley had been one of the lucky ones; one of the ones he hadn’t actually raped, tortured, maimed or mutilated before bringing him a slow unpleasant death or a viciously fast one. So, it hadn’t been a fun event for him; branding Wesley with his ownership. However, it had been worth it as it had meant Katorakan had gone away empty-handed once again. The judges had examined the mark on Wesley’s shoulder which Lorne’s magic ointment had not only managed to soothe but had also made look as if it had always been there; conferred amongst themselves, nodded intently, then told Katorakan that the previous judgement of the court had been upheld. There could be no further appeal upon this subject. The human slave was the property of the vampire. Case closed.

“You did it, Will,” Buffy whispered to her. “You helped save Wesley. Katorakan can never make another claim on him.”

“And when I get my bones back, I’ll be really happy about it,” Willow whispered back. “Right now, I have to make like a jellyfish – a really sleepy jellyfish.”

“Why don’t I stay here with you for a while?” Buffy took Willow’s hand in hers and held it; Angel knew she was trying to invest her with some Slayer strength to replenish some of her scarily depleted energy. 

“You don’t have to…” Willow’s ever-expressive eyes however were saying ‘Please, don’t go’.

Buffy smiled at her and then gave her a gentle shove. “Move over. I need to lie down too. It’s tiring watching other people work.”

“Thank you, Willow,” Angel said softly.

Willow’s eyelids flickered and she gave him a sleepy smile. “You’re welcome.” 

As he backed away, Xander passed him. “How is she?”

Angel grimaced. “Tired.”

“I thought we’d…” Xander shivered and Angel remembered going into the office to find Willow clammy and shaking in Giles’s arms, neither of them wanting to make any sound while the tribunal was still debating the merits of Katorakan’s case. Then Xander was plastering a cheerful smile on his face. “Room for one more?”

Willow smiled at him in relief and he lay on the bed next to her, stroking her hair back from her brow. Buffy snuggled down next to Willow and put her arms around her, while Xander took Willow’s hand in hers and spooned up against her. Angel briefly remembered him and Cordelia drifting off into sleep in his bed, Connor between them, contentedly sucking on his bottle. He wondered just how close he’d come to perfect happiness back then, or if just knowing that nothing could ever be perfect for him would be enough to stop him ever reaching that point again. 

He pushed the door almost closed and left the three of them to sleep. He had heard what Lorne said to Buffy about her not having lost her friends while Angel had lost his, and no one was more aware of his failures in that area than him. Doyle. Cordelia. Fred. All people who had trusted him to keep them safe. People he’d rescued and each time he’d saved them it had felt as if he had not just saved them on that occasion but for eternity; as if it could never happen again because it had happened this once. Cordelia never again be lost to the visions or Fred to the monsters that had driven her to hide up here. He passed her old room and touched the door gently, remembering her drawing on the walls, so brave and scared at the same time. Fred dying in Wesley’s arms and him left with a dead friend, a friend in the hospital, and Wesley about to fragment. Not knowing how to help him. How could you put your arms around someone who was liable to break into a thousand pieces from one careless pressure? Spike saying that what Wes needed was time, and Angel knowing there wasn’t enough time in the world, and long before Wesley was over it his liver would have given up the ghost if someone didn’t tough-love that bottle out of his hand. 

Wanting Illyria dead for what she’d done to Fred, was still doing to Wesley. A part of him still did. Another part had to accept that she was an ally now. That all that pacing and flouncing and pontificating might make her annoying but it also meant she had an emotional commitment to a member of his team; a member of his family. She was the unwanted in-law. Buffy had been landed with enough of those over the years: werewolves and witches and vengeance demons she’d had to take a deep breath and accommodate because someone she loved loved them. Not to mention the small matter of having to accept a vampire as an ally because she’d been so unwise as to fall in love with one. At least Wesley wasn’t in love with Illyria, he could be grateful for that small mercy; but she was still one of them now. 

He made his way downstairs to where his people were still clustered protectively around Wesley. Spike had reclaimed his precious single malt but was sharing it with everyone except Angel.

“So, how does it feel to be a demon chattel, crumpet?” Lorne asked him.

Wesley shrugged. “So far, not very different from – not being a demon chattel. Does it come with a wage by the way?”

“It’s a privilege,” Angel told him. “You should really pay me.”

They grinned at one another and for a moment there it was almost like having the real Wesley back. 

“And he’s really tight,” Spike added helpfully. “You’ll know that – when you get your memories back. All those restaurant bills he passed to you – all come flooding back.”

Giles looked up at Angel, saying quietly, “How is she?”

“Sleeping.” Angel glanced up at the room. “I hope she knows how much we owe her.”

“I’ll be sure to keep reminding her,” Giles assured him. “And you.”

“I heard what you said to Gunn that time you were discussing the branding question, so why did you…? Why didn’t you tell him not to…?”

Giles sighed. “Because it’s about free will, like Gunn and Xander said, and when Wesley had possession of all his memories – including his memories of you casting him out and betraying him and him losing his trust in you – that was the decision he made. It wasn’t my place to influence him. It was my place to let him decide for himself. Something you could perhaps try in the future from time to time.”

Angel appreciated that Giles was a lot of things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. He certainly hadn’t wanted Wesley to agree to get that brand, and it was probably still annoying him on all kinds of levels that he had, but he hadn’t said any of it aloud. “Well, I’m grateful that you kept your…doubts to yourself.”

“Just don’t start treating him like a possession or I’ll hear about it.”

“I would never do that.” Angel’s automatically gaze went to the mark on Wesley’s shoulder. He tried not to like it; but now it wasn’t actually hurting he had to admit that there was something satisfying about it. 

Gunn said, “Don’t even think it.”

“What?”

“That it would be nice if we all got one. Because – not happening this side of hell.”

Angel shrugged. “Hey, it’s a privilege. What makes you think I’d want to own any of the rest of you anyway?”

“Oh, so I should be flattered then?” Wesley turned around carefully, still not able to put his shirt back on but definitely in a lot less pain than when it had been sizzling its way into his skin.

“Of course.” Angel snaffled the whisky from Spike and took another sip. “I don’t go around just putting my mark on any Tom, Dick or Harry, you know.”

“Actually, as far as I remember from reading about Angelus in the past, you did.” 

“Well, that’s just one of the many benefits of having a soul. It makes you more discerning. Talking of which…” Angel looked at the whisky in dislike. “Don’t we have any wine?”

Wesley looked hopeful. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Or a nice Bordeaux.”

Spike gave him a pitying look. “It’s a miracle you ever made it through puberty without the other kids scragging you to death, Percy.”

“Excuse me for having a palate,” he returned with a flex of the shoulders that would have been vintage Wesley Wyndam-Pryce if he had only been wearing a shirt at the time.

“If Wesley is your bonded slave now, shouldn’t you feed him?” Connor suggested.

“Couldn’t I just throw him a few scraps?”

Giles reached across to the front desk and picked up a menu that looked worryingly classy, all burgundy and shiny with gold calligraphy. “Under the circumstances I think you could really spring for something a little more…appropriate. And I see that this restaurant has rather an impressive wine list.”

“Good restaurants never deliver,” Angel said quickly, relieved that it was the case. “And eating out would be selfish when Willow is too tired to come with us.”

“This one does.” Giles handed it across to Wesley. “And they do indeed appear to have a very nice cabernet sauvignon. And I suspect that Buffy and Xander at least would be very capable of eating something and we could save something for Willow to heat up later.”

Angel gave him a sickly smile. “I see you’ve thought this through.”

Giles gave him a beaming smile back. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t spend a year as a corporate sell out without squirreling away a little money, Angel. And it’s not every day that someone who barely knows you trusts you with his liberty, is it?”

Angel just knew he wasn’t looking any more thrilled than he felt at the prospect of feeding the five thousand who appeared to be clustered around his hotel lobby. It was difficult not to remember with longing the day when everyone else had gone home at night and left him with the place to himself and he only had to buy Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn dinner when he’d fired them and slept with his old vampire lover. Then he had a sudden vivid memory of that hallucination with them all sitting around the table, everything so perfect except for the fact that he was starving and none of it was real.

He took the menu from Wesley and looked at it himself. “Tomorrow, when Wesley gets his memory back. Connor…?” He looked at his son. “Can you make it tomorrow? Do your parents have anything planned?” He refused to stumble over that ‘parents’ and he saw Connor give him a look of gratitude and compassion for doing so. As they looked at him in surprise, he said, “I want Willow to be here. I want everyone to be here who can be. Some of us never can be, after all. Let’s make sure everyone who can…is.”

Spike looked at him sideways. “And this isn’t just a ploy to get out of paying the bill?”

Angel handed the menu back to Wesley. “I’m happy to pay the bill, and, Wes, you can have as much wine as you like – just remember what you’re like when you’re drunk.”

Wesley’s confusion was evident. “What am I like when I’m drunk?”

“Easy.” Angel grinned again, unable to repress it, because Wesley was safe, and, tomorrow, with any luck and a great deal of magical skill on Willow’s part, he would also be whole. “You know how we keep telling you that you being in bed with me was just because of the nightmares…?”

Wesley hastily shoved the menu at Giles. “Perhaps some mineral water.”

“He’s lying, Wes,” said Gunn kindly. “He just doesn’t want you ordering any wine.”

Wesley said quickly, “I knew that…”

“I’d better go.” Connor looked at his watch. “It’s late – I mean early. There should be a bus.” 

“You’ll be here tomorrow? I mean today – later today?” Angel tried to keep the eagerness from his voice but he couldn’t entirely suppress it. It was so strange to look at the Connor of his hallucination and have him be real; well-adjusted and calm and good-humoured.

Connor nodded. “Sure.” He patted Wesley gently on his unbranded shoulder. “It was good to see you again, Wesley, and I look forward to meeting the Wesley who remembers me later today. When are you doing that, by the way?”

“When Willow’s rested.” Giles looked up. “She thinks about four in the afternoon. The idea is that we will all sensibly sleep through the morning and emerge with our batteries recharged and able to assist her.”

“You should probably do that then,” Connor said cheerfully. “What with Willow being a witch and able to turn you into newts if you don’t do what she says.” He turned back to Lorne and gazed at him for a moment.

“Something on your mind, cupcake?” Lorne enquired with a frown.

“I should have said before – when the Orlon window smashed, I got all my memories back. Even the things you wouldn’t usually remember. What it was like in the womb. What it was like being born, when everything just…vanished all around me. And what it was like having lullabies sung to me. I can sometimes still hear them – I especially liked the one about you selling me to the vampire cults; that was kind of catchy.” He smiled at him gently. “I remember being a kind of racist thug when I turned up from Quortoth too. I never thanked you for the lullabies. Just wanted you to know I appreciated them.” He glanced across at Wesley. “And before you have kids, Wesley, you really need to learn how to hold them, because that unexploded bomb grip – not big on making a baby feel safe.”

“You remember everything?” Angel was dazed by that; thinking his own memory recall was bad enough, but even he didn’t remember the sounds of the womb, his mother’s heart beating with the life he had later stolen from her.

“Everything.” Connor smiled at him. “Kind of cool, isn’t it? Apart from all the psycho crazy stuff. And even that’s – well, maybe it will save me having to have a rebellion this time around, what do you think?”

“Well, Wesley never had a teenage rebellion,” Angel observed. “And look how he turned out.”

They both looked at Wesley. Connor nodded. “I see your point. Okay, I’ll schedule one in for later this year. See you all later.” He waved and left.

Lorne shook his head. “Nice kid. Amazing what not being brought up in a hell dimension can do for you.”

Wesley took the whisky bottle from Spike. “And later today all that guilt will be mine again.”

“There’s still time to stay how you are,” Angel said hastily.

Wesley shook his head. “No, we’re way past that point. I’m ready to be crazy, and, I trust you all to pick up the pieces.”

He’d spoken lightly but there was nothing frivolous about the way Gunn said, “We will, Wes.”

Angel felt his heart tighten again; it seemed all wrong he should be getting what he wanted after what he’d done to these people; that they should forgive him for what he’d done to their memories, to their sanity; to their lives. But there was a brand on Wesley’s back which now told the world that they trusted him, despite everything, they trusted him. And try as he might to feel otherwise, he couldn’t help being glad that it was there.

***

Wesley looked around the circle and took a deep breath. It was ironic that what was really frightening him now wasn’t remembering so much as forgetting. He knew there was a risk, Willow had told him, quietly and gently, that she wasn’t entirely sure that she could do this and put things exactly back the way before. She would try her best but there was a chance that something might go wrong. He had nodded and said he understood and he wanted her to try anyway but now as he looked around these people he thought about how it would feel to forget them again. What if in trying to remember what he’d forgotten he ended up forgetting what he currently remembered? He didn’t want to lose these last few weeks. He didn’t want to wake up and not know who he was or who they were. 

Buffy had refused to even admit the possibility of failure and had banned everyone else from voicing it either. She had spent the day shopping and then cooking, not, as she had assured everyone, because she wanted to save Angel’s wallet – she had made him pay for the ingredients and made Giles drive her to the store so he could pick out the wine – but because if they were going to have a celebratory dinner then she was going to cook it, and the first person to mention syphilis or vengeful Shumash would be peeling all the potatoes with a spoon. She had press-ganged Xander and Gunn into helping her with the food preparation, told Angel and Spike to take their blood out of her fridge and thrown herself into full-on manic Homemaker Buffy mode. The hotel had been filled with the dual scents of delicious food and pungent herbs all day as Lorne and Willow made preparation for the memory restoration spell in the lobby while Buffy took over the kitchen. Wesley and Giles had both claimed that they were needed for the magic side of things to avoid becoming unpaid sous-chefs for Buffy and had won themselves a number of dirty looks from Gunn and Xander because of it. 

“She’s made me peel every potato in Los Angeles,” Gunn hissed at Wesley as he passed him in the lobby, his arms full of hotel linen that Buffy had decided needed another wash before it was suitable to be spread on the dining table.

“You don’t even want to know what she’s made me do to an inoffensive turkey,” Xander added.

“Hurry up, you two!” Buffy called out to them from the bowels of the kitchen. “I need you to wash up some of these pans.”

“What did her last slave die of?” Gunn muttered as he disappeared into the basement in search of better whiter soap powder to vanquish those extra stubborn stains.

Wesley had tried to look as busy as possible as he ground herbs with a pestle and mortar whenever Gunn and Xander passed by for the rest of the day, but had not been fast enough to warn Connor as he walked into the lobby. 

“Just who I need!” Buffy grabbed the boy by the arm, and dragged him away towards the kitchen. “I need you to mash for me.” Wesley noticed that Connor didn’t look exactly unhappy about being manhandled by Buffy and presumed that was probably genetic.

In some ways the preparation for the spell had felt divorced from the spell itself. He and Giles had reminisced about the Academy and its more eccentric teachers; Lorne had told tales about Pylea and Willow had filled them in on the situation in Cleveland. It had been a nice quiet day, only occasionally pierced by Buffy shouting at Spike for smoking in her kitchen or at Angel for not exercising better control over Spike. “He’s _your_ grand-thing!” had floated up to them at one point. 

“Well, if you’d staked him in Sunnydale instead of sleeping with him he wouldn’t be in ‘your kitchen’, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is actually is _my_ kitchen…”

“I wasn’t the first person in this room to sleep with Spike.”

“I didn’t have a soul when I did it. What was your excuse?”

“I’d just come back from the dead!”

“I _was_ dead!”

“I was traumatized!”

“Oh yes, because sleeping with serial killers is always such a cure for that!”

“I don’t remember you telling me that when I was sleeping with you!”

But Willow had quickly remedied that by getting up and shutting the door to block them out. Apart from that it had been a very pleasant day, just as long as Wesley didn’t think about what they were really making these preparations for, and how, if something went wrong, he could end up a basketcase…

 

“Okay, crumpet. Step one.” Lorne held out the spoon with the dab of something mystical and honey-flavoured on it. Not that the spell needed honey, apparently, it would just taste too bitter to stomach without it. Lorne’s red eyes were anxious but he gave Wesley a reassuring smile. “Got your memory back with this before, so, Willow and I are thinking it can’t do any harm this time. It should make your mind more receptive to the spell Willow needs to do. And it tastes nice.”

Wesley obediently opened his mouth and let Lorne feed him the odd-tasting dollop of mystical medicine. Underneath the sweetness there was a truly bitter core and he grimaced. “‘Tastes nice’ in what world?”

Lorne shrugged. “Well, okay, not actually this one…”

There was a mixture of bones, claws, feathers, crystals, bowls of various liquids, and various herbs within the circle they had all formed, Willow sitting directly opposite Wesley, and Gunn and Angel each side of him. That hadn’t been discussed; for once, even Illyria seeming to accept that those were the hands he needed to be holding. Connor smiled at him encouragingly across the circle. Wesley suspected the real reason Connor had arrived early was so that he could reassure Wesley, when his memories kicked back in, that he hadn’t done anything wrong in stealing him when he was a baby. He suspected nothing was ever going to stop that memory stinging like a whiplash but it was still a kind thought on Connor’s behalf.

“You’ll be fine, Wes,” Buffy assured him. 

Wesley tightened his grip on Gunn and Angel’s hands, looking around the circle of people, trying to fix their faces and names too securely for any mere spell to dislodge them: Angel, Connor, Lorne, Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Illyria, Spike, Gunn, thinking _Don’t let me forget them_ and then looked up sharply. “Good grief – of course I wouldn’t have wanted to forget Fred and Cordelia.”

“You remember?” Gunn demanded.

“No, I just –” He looked around at them all; the faces he was trying to imprint into his memory clearly enough that they couldn’t be shaken loose even by Willow’s spell. “I just know.”

“It’s going to be okay, Wes,” Angel told him quietly. 

“Yeah, English. No worries.” He felt Gunn tighten the grip on his hand and tightened his own grip in response; for once in his life, really not giving a damn about how it looked to be holding hands with another man. 

Willow took a deep breath. “Everyone hold hands and concentrate. Close your eyes if it helps you to focus.”

Wesley closed his eyes, trying to think about the spell, only about the spell, when what he really wanted to think about were the people in this circle, and how these were the first people he _remembered_ being kind to him, friends he didn’t want to give up. Then he wrenched his mind back to the words Willow was chanting, and felt the air crackle and then there was that extraordinary sensation of being in his body and yet it not being entirely under his control, feeling the magic moving through his veins, his bones, his mind – his breath hitched in panic and Gunn and Angel both tightened their grip on his hand. He concentrated on that, the warmth of Gunn’s skin, Angel, room temperature, but both of them holding him as if nothing could ever tear him loose. He realized then that it would be okay whatever happened. He would remember them or he would forget them, but they would hold onto him whatever happened, keep him safe, keep him with them until they came back to him; and they would come back to him because he couldn’t be separated from these people. It would just be…wrong, an imbalance in the world that couldn’t be permitted. Too frightening to remember that the world had permitted it for two and a half decades, of course, before he’d come here, and found them, but at least he _had_ found them… The magic coursed through him, the air alight with power, his skin tingling with it; and then the world became warm and dark and silent and he slipped into it quite willingly.

He woke to the sound of Angel saying his name. He opened his eyes and the room spun so fast he wondered if he were on a roundabout. He saw a blur of faces, pale-ish, pinkish, greenish, bluish and brownish skin, red hair, blue hair, blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, toxic hair. Then the carousel slowed a little and he could make out details. Anxious Willow. Anxious Giles. Anxious Lorne. He remembered their names. He looked down at his right hand and saw Gunn’s hand gripping it. The man was saying gently:

“Wesley, are you okay? Wes?”

He turned his head which made the room lurch sickeningly, as if he were on the deck of a boat in a storm, the same unmanageable swell. But once the urge to hurl passed he could focus again and there was the face he was looking for. Someone else gazing at him anxiously.

“Wes…?”

Wesley grinned at Angel; the vampire with the soul whom he clearly remembered meeting in the Bronze in the days when he hadn’t known his name; clearly remembered being branded by the day before, too. “No one calls me that.”

Angel must have recognized his smile for what it was as he grinned like a dork. “I do.”

“English…?”

He managed the difficult manoeuvre of turning his head back to look at Gunn again and grinned at him too. “Charles, you peed on my shoes.”

“Yes!” Gunn pulled him into an embrace that was as careful as it was warm. The man always did that, Wesley remembered, acted as if he still had a healing gunshot wound in his gut. One day Gunn really did need to let that particular memory go.

“You peed on his shoes?” Xander echoed.

Wesley remembered meeting Xander too. They’d never liked each other – he remembered that, too – which was odd because he was now filled with warm fuzzy feelings where he was concerned.

“Territorial marking,” Wesley explained. “Gunn took it a little too far.”

“It was an accident. I wasn’t actually claiming Wesley for the legal department. You remember?”

Wesley beamed at him. “I remember everything.” Then he looked around the circle at Connor and Illyria and his face fell. “Everything.”

Angel tightened the grip on the hand he was still holding. “Are you okay?”

Wesley slowly looked around the circle again; everyone was now trying not to look anxious but to give him reassuring and encouraging looks instead. It was just as well he wasn’t feeling ready to be measured up for a strait jacket or their expressions would undoubtedly have sent him bounding for the nearest padded cell. He remembered trying to remember them, fearing to forget them, trying to imprint their faces in his memory. He remembered the first time he had met each one of them. He remembered Cordelia in the library at Sunnydale, the first beautiful woman to ever look at him as if he were something desirable and suave and handsome and clever, and so drained and lost-looking in that hospital bed as he sat in a wheelchair and tried to incant around the pain that made speaking such an effort, and Cordy stroking his hair in the hospital as everything swirled around the edges of the morphine in his veins, and the empty place in his flat she hadn’t filled after he’d stolen Connor, when he’d waited for her to come back from her holiday in the hope that she at least might visit him, could yell and scold all she liked as long as she came to see him. And he remembered her in that final hospital beaming with life and vitality that was just another illusion, but the most wonderful illusion yet. 

He gasped and looked across at Illyria, remembered Fred, so astonishingly brave, luring the beast Angel had turned into away from him and Gunn with the blood on her hand; sitting under the table eating lunch with them; and himself transformed into a monster who hunted her through the hotel with an axe in his hand… Fred so beautiful in evening dress that he had known that he would have to say something to her, finally, tell her how he felt, only to lose her to Gunn, her cold words to him at the hospital, and then the surprise and pleasure in her eyes when she realized he was still the man she had known, that he still cared what became of her. And then… And then there was so much. Hope and desire and confusion and longing and jealousy; that stolen kiss; the heat between them that tangible dangerous guilty thing; Lilah a pale corpse beneath the blade of his axe; putting that look on Gunn’s face; moving on and finding he hadn’t moved anywhere except in a neat circle to a place where he was looking at Fred looking at another man again. Drunken confidences and the exquisite warmth of her trust. Gunshots. The robot fizzling. The taste of bile in his mouth. Fred walking away with Knox even though he’d just killed his father for her sake, _because_ he’d just killed his father for her sake and that was too unbalanced a devotion for her to deal with right now. Deciding there was no more hope now; that he would never be anything other than her friend; and then that sudden kiss out of nowhere, her telling him that she had been trying to tell him for weeks and weeks that things were different while he sighed in oblivious stupidity. And then… And then… And then.

“Illyria.” He looked into her eyes and she gazed back at him. Not Fred’s eyes, thank god. Very much her own. Which was what she was now. A separate entity. Not human. Not demon. A strange hybrid marooned in a strange dimension, an outcast of her own kind and his, and he her only anchor to this less than brave new world.

“Do you remember me now?” She threw it out like a challenge but behind the defiance in her pale blue eyes there was something that looked remarkably like fear of rejection.

“I remember you, Illyria. I remember you stayed here to help me when the bomb was inside me at the risk of your own life.” He looked around them, Buffy and Willow and Xander and Giles, Spike and Lorne and Gunn and Angel. “I remember that you all did that. Thank you.”

“You really remember?” Willow gazed at him anxiously.

“Yes, Willow, the spell is reversed. Thank you.”

“Oh…” She gave a shivering sort of semi-collapse of relief, and Buffy rubbed her back comfortingly. “Oh, I’m… I’m glad…very, very glad. Kind of overwhelming…actually… on account of thinking I’d mushed your brain even more. But I didn’t, right…? Tell me I didn’t…?”

“Unmushed,” he promised her. “I remember everything. I remember arriving in Sunnydale and you all unaccountably not being pleased to see me.” He could barely restrain a grin as Willow, Xander, Buffy and Giles exchanged guilty grimaces. “And I remember meeting Angel for the first time and totally failing to remember his name.”

“Hey, I didn’t tell you my name,” Angel insisted, still holding onto his hand. “If I had, you would have remembered it.”

“Doubtful.” Wesley looked at him sideways. 

“Didn’t forget my name,” Gunn said smugly.

“I didn’t _tell_ him my name.”

“Which was just as well really as it delayed me being able to give you up to Balthazar like the craven coward I was back then.”

“You weren’t a coward, Wesley,” Giles said at once. “You were just – unprepared.”

“And terrified of physical pain,” Wesley reminded him.

Connor scratched his jaw thoughtfully, distracted by the new itch of first stubble. “You’re afraid of pain? Because I’m wondering if you’re in the right line of work.”

“I’m sort of used to it now, I think. Five years of working with Angel will do that to a man.”

“Hey!” Angel gave him a reproachful look.

Wesley squeezed his hand gently so Angel would look down and see whose fingers he was still clinging to.

Spike lit a cigarette. “So, are you three just going to sit there like a bunch of nancies, holding hands all day or do we get a celebratory drink?”

“We’re just going to hold hands,” Gunn assured him.

“I was rather hoping for a cup of tea,” Wesley murmured to him.

Gunn slipped his fingers loose to pat him – gently – on the back. “Coming right up, English.”

As Wesley climbed to his feet – the room still swaying a little – Angel hung onto his elbow to steady him and he was immediately surrounded by more of those anxious – familiar – faces. 

“Do you need a Sea Breeze, crumpet? Or a nice Bloody Mary?”

“How about a scotch, mate? I’ve still got some left that old Broodypants didn’t snaffle.”

“I really think a cup of tea would be more appropriate given the hour.”

“I remember a time when you weren’t waiting for the sun to be over the yardarm, Giles.”

“Thank you, Buffy, and would you like me to recount all your less than shining moments to Wesley now? I believe he missed quite a few of them.”

Willow hugged him – gingerly – albeit with great warmth and affection.

“May I embrace you also – in the custom of your race?” 

Wesley turned to find Illyria looking at him with a plaintive expression on her beautiful blue-toned face. He was suddenly reminded of Cordelia trying to find the courage to ask him out in front of everyone, so breathtakingly beautiful while he was so breathtakingly inept that he had no idea how to respond, only knowing that it was wrong to date a student, probably wrong to be so aware of the warmth of her body and the invitation of her glorious mouth, and those incredible breasts, and definitely very confusing and bewildering and causing all kinds of heat in places where it really had no business being. He hadn’t even noticed her vulnerability at the time, or her courage; that had come later, when he’d thought back and realized that she had been a truly remarkable young woman and he had been humiliatingly useless around her.

Illyria seemed to feel some face-saving excuse was necessary. “I feel I should explore more facets of the odd behaviour of your species.”

Wesley nodded. “Yes, Illyria, thank you, I’d like a hug.”

Spike shook his head in disgust. “Call yourself an Englishman.”

“Well, I have been in LA for five years.” 

Illyria enclosed him in her arms tentatively, reminding him of himself and his first attempt to kiss Cordelia. Then she tightened her grip cautiously and pulled him against her. It was extremely awkward but as she laid her cheek against his he couldn’t help remembering Fred in his arms, her hair against his skin. He gave a little gasp and Illyria sprang back from him.

“I have injured you!”

“No,” he quickly reassured her. “It was – very nice.”

“You are very thin,” she observed.

He looked at her incredibly slender body pointedly. “Are you familiar with a certain saying about pots and kettles, Illyria?”

“Are you really okay?”

He turned to find Connor looking at him in concern.

Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’m – sorry about everything. How it turned out. How you…”

“Turned out?” Connor half-smiled. “So much of my life seems to have been pre-destined – maybe I was always slated to go to Quor’toth. I appreciate you trying to save me when I was a baby, Wesley, and I’m sorry for what it cost you.”

Wesley ran his fingers along his throat. He wasn’t sure if the scar had faded naturally or if something to do with the memory wipe had altered it but it was barely visible now, and yet he clearly remembered it being that terrible jagged gash. He closed his eyes and remembered Justine bleeding, feeling sorry for her, letting his guard down, then feeling Justine grab him, the blade across his throat, not the pain so much as the weakness that went through him as the blood suddenly spilled, and the baby, seeing the baby being taken by her to Holtz.

He swayed and opened his eyes to find Connor holding his arm. “I remember it, too,” Connor said. “I know I shouldn’t be able to, but I can. It was one of the memories taken – the buried ones, the ones so far back they shouldn’t even exist any more, but they’re there and they were taken from me by Vail and given back to me when you broke the window.”

“I’m sorry…”

“So, I remember, being held by you, and then her taking me from you. I remember the smell of your blood. And I remember when I was an adult you cutting my chest…”

“I’m sorry…”

“And the way you looked at me when you put your hand against my face, with such pity for me, and such love.” Connor looked into his eyes. “And stop saying sorry. I’ve done – terrible things, Wesley.”

“Because of me, because I let Holtz…”

“No. Because of me. Because of who I was. Because of who I let myself become. If you want to carry all the guilt for every single mistake you’ve ever made, that’s your choice, and I can’t stop you, but me – you don’t need to feel any guilt about me. I absolve you. Or if you prefer – I forgive you. Absolutely. I’m glad you got your memories back, and I think you made the right choice, and what we did shapes what we are, but some things you just need to let go of and move on from, and, taking me, that’s one of them.”

Wesley snatched a breath and looked up to find Angel right there beside him, fingers a fraction of an inch from his elbow in case he needed the support. He gazed into Angel’s eyes and Angel gazed back, those brown eyes more familiar than his own reflection.

Connor added gently: “And Angel forgave you a long time ago, Wesley.”

“I tried to tell you that, remember?” Angel said. “That I was grateful I hadn’t killed you. Very grateful. That while I was under the ocean I was thinking about how glad I was that we could still be a family again, all of us.”

Wesley frowned. “I don’t remember you telling me that.”

“Well, okay, maybe I didn’t exactly articulate it as clearly as I could have done, but you didn’t exactly give me a lot of time. You were all covered in demon gloop and you kept looking at me like…that and I sort of thought you’d be glad to see me and instead you were… So, okay, maybe I could have been clearer, but I did forgive you. I just wasn’t sure if you’d forgiven me for the whole…pillow thing.”

“I never blamed you.” Wesley lowered his gaze. “I thought I deserved it, too.”

Connor looked at Angel pointedly. “You have so much more work to do on Wesley’s self-esteem.”

“I know,” Angel protested. 

“Work in progress.” Gunn held out a cup of tea. “We’re on it.”

“Could you not talk about me as if I’m a…walking therapy case?” Wesley pleaded.

Connor patted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Wesley, we don’t judge. We know you’re English.”

Wesley looked after the boy with a frown. “For someone who wasn’t raised by you, he’s horribly like you at times.”

“Annoying?” Gunn enquired.

Wesley looked into Angel’s eyes again. “Comforting.”

 

He drank his tea and received hugs from everyone except Giles – they had very sensibly shaken hands – and murmured more reassurances that he did indeed remember them and everything that had taken place before and after his last bout of memory loss. Then he went upstairs alone. Angel looked anxiously at him and Wesley gently shook his head, and made his own way, holding onto the banister, but managing the stairs all by himself. As he climbed them now he remembered Angel carrying him up them when they came back from Askaroth. Remembered Angel coming down them so many times. Fred. Cordelia. Connor. 

He closed his eyes and remembered Cordelia hugging him in the hospital, her hands on his back, warm and alive and strong and…the last gasp of a woman who knew she had only one day left. And she had chosen to spend several hours of it with him, researching in the old way, turning the pages of books, so that he would remember after she had gone that she had tried to spend a day with him in the way that she thought he would enjoy it most. A day where he was happy thinking she was back for good, not a day clouded with misery at the thought that this was the last time he would ever see her again. Taken the time to apologize to him for something she had never done. He was glad he’d told her that she hadn’t killed Lilah. There was just so much more that he would have liked to say to her, things he had mentally filed away to say later, about how no one blamed her, and they were just so incredibly glad to have her back, how much they’d missed her, how everything had fallen apart without her. But then, of course, if he’d known, this wouldn’t be his last memory of her, this happy memory of them working together and her smiling at him and telling him he had the best mojo in town.

“That’s so typical of you, Cordelia,” he murmured. “Always thought you knew what was best for us. And were generally absolutely right.”

He avoided the room where she had spent time with Connor. That hadn’t been Cordelia, just the higher power who had visited them as Jasmine, realizing there wasn’t a room that particularly said ‘Cordelia’; the whole hotel did that, his memories did that. That beautiful girl who had so inexplicably liked him in Sunnydale – she had pretty much made that whole humiliating experience bearable single-handed. No one, however much they felt as if they were entirely failing to make the right impression, could feel completely desolate when the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life made a beeline for him every time he walked into the room, and proceeded to act as if no one else existed for her. He closed his eyes again and remembered him walking into that old basement of Angel’s and Cordelia grabbing him and kissing him, and this time the technique he’d just learned working perfectly, but the moment had passed, the time was gone. She no longer needed a life raft out of the shipwreck of her old life, and he had found an identity for himself that wasn’t entirely a lie. Just as well, perhaps. If they’d kissed like that in Sunnydale, she might have come back to England with him; they would never have worked with Angel. _She might still be alive_. No. Okay, no. He wasn’t going to blame Cordelia’s death on the fact that he’d been a bad kisser. He was willing to beat himself up about all manner of unlikely things but even he drew the line there.

He went into an unoccupied room and sat on the bed. It was quiet here and still, and she had probably come in here at some point; walked in here with long dark hair, or short blonde hair, or one of the various styles she had tried out in between. He inhaled and there was nothing of her scent here, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been in here more than once. He remembered all their childish squabbles and grinned at the memory of how incredibly immature they had both been.

_“Every night it’s Jeopardy, followed by Wheel of Fortune and a cup of hot cocoa. Look out girls, this one can’t be tamed…”_

_“Angel, make her stop!”_

_“What if – every time you identified the demon in one of your big old books, we gave you ten bucks – or a chicken pot pie….”_

_“What class? Advanced bosoms…?”_

_“Well, you certainly didn’t help by making him feel _guilty_ about it. You shamed him into firing us!” _

Then he remembered her bending over him as the world was greying in and out of focus, that agonizing pain in his guts, so bad he had tried to retreat from it every way he could without success until there only seemed to be death left, but that reassuring smile of such incredible warmth on her face, telling him to hang in there, that it was going to be okay. He’d believed her. He’d always believed her. She and Gunn between them had willed him to stay alive and it had been enough, the look in their eyes, the touch of their hands, all those gentle words of love and encouragement.

He remembered her doubled over in pain with the visions, that washed out look on her face afterwards as the pain lingered and lingered; not telling them about the headaches or the neural scans or the imminent death she was facing alone. That was the first time she hadn’t told them she knew she was going to die but didn’t want them bothered by it.

He closed his eyes and remembered her coming to him the day after her birthday; the birthday where they’d almost lost her to that coma; the birthday, where, although they hadn’t known it then, Jasmine had first got her hooks into Cordelia through the heartless betrayal of Skip. He was so glad he’d put a bullet in that bastard’s brain.

_“Wes…?”_

Looking up in surprise from his books as Cordelia walked into his office. _“I thought you were supposed to be resting today?”_

_“Hey, a coma’s as good as rest, right?” A dismissive wave of her hand. “And all demony now, remember? So, no more messing with the girl from Sunnydale.”_

_“Like any of us had the courage to mess with you before.” He’d smiled at her but her eyes had still looked anxious. “Is something wrong?”_

_“No, I just...” Coming over to where he was sitting in the office and surprising him by stroking his hair back from his eyes. “I just needed to check you were okay.”_

_He was blank for a moment until he remembered what she’d told them about her visit to that alternate reality. He held up his left arm to show her it was still intact and attached. “I’m fine.”_

_“Well, you look better than he did, anyway. At least you look like you’ve slept a few days this month, and maybe eaten in the past week at least.”_

_He held up the plate on which a half-eaten piece of her birthday cake was sitting. “In the past hour actually.”_

_She put her head on one side. “Have you ever thought about getting contacts or maybe laser treatment?”_

_“My Great Aunt Stephanie has promised to leave me enough money in her will to pay for laser surgery, and she is ninety-seven so, who knows? Why are you asking?”_

_“The other you – he was kind of hot in an about-to-have-a-nervous-breakdown kind of way.” She shook her head. “But fighting demons with one arm…? I so don’t want that to ever happen to you.” She sat next to him on the chair and rested her head on his shoulder; not at all the usual way Cordelia treated him._

_He touched her hair tentatively. “It didn’t, Cordelia, remember? If it was going to happen it would have happened by now.”_

_She looked up at him. “Okay. Keep reminding me of that for the next few days, will you? Because seeing Angel all crazy with the visions and you with one arm and on your last nerve and… Hey, not to mention you shacked up with Gunn. How bizarro world is that?”_

_He gaped at her. “What? ‘Shacked up with…’? You never said anything about….”_

_“Well, I didn’t want to embarrass you both unnecessarily. I was going to wait until it would be much funnier and embarrass you then.”_

_That was the Cordy he knew and loved. He grinned at her. “You’re an evil demonic creature. I’m sure it’s in the job description that we’re supposed to slay creatures like you.”_

_“Hah. Just because you’ve got two arms in this reality, doesn’t mean you can take me, bucko.” She straightened his hair carefully. “Just… keep both the arms, Wes, and don’t let Gunn move in with you, because he obviously can’t cook or keep the place tidy. Of course, the sex may have been amazing….”_

_As he grimaced she beamed at him. “So, what will you give me not to tell Gunn about that part of the proceedings?”_

He opened his eyes and the memory faded, but he found he was still smiling, despite the tears in his eyes. “I miss you, Cordy…” he breathed. “But then, you always knew I would, didn’t you? I think you must have got my share of self-esteem as well as your own. Probably why you were so good for me. You do know how good you were for me, right? What am I saying? Of course you did. Do.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Are you still up there? Are you watching over us? Did you help us back from that place? Were you there when Fred died? It must be very frustrating for you if you are, not able to help us out when we screw up yet again. He said her soul was destroyed, Cordelia. But I don’t see how it can be, not destroyed. I believed it then but I don’t think I believe it now. I think it was consumed. I think it’s in Illyria. I think that’s what made me need her, made me want to help her. I think there’s some of Fred’s humanity left inside her. I have to believe we can all be together again one day, be where you are, I mean.” 

He rose to his feet and walked around the room, touching the surfaces lightly. Her things were around somewhere, her boxes, her books, probably even her fluffy slippers, but he wasn’t ready to look at those yet. He would do it another time. Perhaps get Illyria to help him, help her to understand a little more about what human grief was, how the complicated miracle that was another life could not be mourned in an hour or a day, how you carried the dead ones with you always, how they became a part of you because they were one of the things that shaped you.

“Losing you, I think it’s stopped me being afraid to die. Losing Fred, it just made it too unbearable to live for a while. But I don’t feel like that now. I believe I’m going to see you again some day. You came back from the dead to say goodbye to us and it didn’t feel like a last farewell to me. It felt like _au revoir_. So, one day we’ll all be dead, and we’ll meet up again, yes? Do I have to make sure Angel shanshus to meet us all there? Or is all the good he’s done enough to buy him his ticket to that higher plane? Just make sure there’s a teapot, okay? Just for me.”

He had never cried without feeling unbearable misery before. This was different. This was just something he had to do because of Cordelia, like packing her things away, and trying to inhale her scent in her old clothes, and smiling at those old photographs. She’d kept one of them both at the Prom. He remembered that one. She had looked so unbelievably beautiful. He would find the old photographs another day, definitely, and smile at that one, and probably cry a little more, but they would be good tears, because he’d known her, Cordelia Chase, and she had made his life so much better.

Those were the images he always summoned to mind when he thought of feminine beauty: Cordelia in her prom dress and Fred heading off for the ballet. He had never seen anything lovelier. He doubted that he ever would. 

“Quite something when you think about it, Cordy.” He wiped his eyes and smiled up at the ceiling – a pointless thing to do but it felt appropriate. “The two most beautiful women in the world, bar none, and I got to kiss both of you. Okay, on one of those occasions I got to kiss you very badly, but I like to think the second time made up for it. And I’m sorry I forgot you for a while, but it really wasn’t entirely my fault, and there is no danger of that ever happening again.”

“Wes…?”

He turned to find Angel in the doorway looking at him anxiously. He sighed. “That whole being alone to remember and grieve thing – not a concept Mr Brood For A Century can grasp?”

Angel grimaced. “Lot of windows up here. I’m not sure yet how good you are at passing them.”

“I was talking to Cordelia.” Wesley knew it sounded crazy and didn’t much care. “A slightly one-sided conversation, I admit, but my half at least made a lot of sense.”

“I do that too.” Angel sat down on the bed. “I asked her what I should do about you. Asked her if she minded me not wanting you to remember her.”

“You needed to _ask_ her about that?” Wesley demanded. “Of course she’d mind. Cordy did not spend all those years trying to lick us into shape only to have us forget her. You’re lucky she didn’t throw a book at you like Phantom Dennis used to do to me.”

Angel frowned. “Phantom Dennis. Do you think he’s…you know… gone into the light to be with Cordy?”

Wesley shrugged. “I don’t know. He may have done. They could be having an afterlife wedding for all I know. I just wish Fred could have been a bridesmaid.”

Angel looked at him compassionately. “How bad is it? The remembering?”

“On a scale of okay to you waking up with a soul? I don’t know. It hurts. But I think it’s meant to.” He absolutely wasn’t ready to deal with Lilah yet. It was too painful. He missed her and felt guilty for missing her in the same breath, in exactly the way he’d used to want her and feel guilty for wanting her in the same hardening of over-heated flesh; she was always going to be a wound that snagged and tore on remorse, and that sick feeling of failure because he hadn’t saved her.

But he could think of the other woman he had failed to save. He closed his eyes and thought of Fred with her hair all tangled, wearing a sack, holding up a blood-stained hand to lure Angel away from two men she’d never even seen before. So beautiful, so fragile, and so brave. Thought of her kissing him. Thought of her smiling. Thought of her dying. He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes. “Angel, I hope nothing like this ever happens again but given the strangeness of our lives, who knows…? So, just for future reference – however bad it gets, whatever I do, whomever I lose, I don’t want to forget anything. Not Cordy, not Fred, not you, not Gunn, not Lorne, not Connor, not Lilah. I don’t ever want to forget any of you ever again. Is that clear?”

Angel blinked at him in shock. “Yes.”

“I know you were just trying to protect me, but please don’t. Not from the people that I love. Not from the first people to ever love me. I want to remember every single minute of every single day I ever got to spend with every one of you. Understood?”

Angel gazed at him and then smiled, that smile one almost never saw on his face, lit up and happy, briefly looking like the boy he must once have been. “Understood.”

Wesley headed along the corridor, with Angel following him. Apparently there was no chance of him being able to do this by himself, Angel needed to trail a few paces behind to make sure he didn’t explode the way Illyria had almost done; her radiant essence something too devastating to be contained by the fragile human shell she had hi-jacked for her own use. Was that how Angel thought of his grief – as some thermonuclear instability with the power to level cities? He didn’t think his grief came in electric blue; a darker shade of melancholy, definitely.

Fred’s room. He took a deep breath and then pushed open the door.

“You don’t need to do this now,” Angel said quickly. “You don’t have to do this at all.”

“Yes, I do.” Angel still didn’t get it and Wesley gazed into his eyes, hoping he could show him what he apparently wasn’t managing to explain to him. “I want to.”

He remembered painting this room, supervised by Fred’s parents, and he and Gunn both grinning like schoolchildren because there were _parents_ around, the nice kind that scolded you lovingly and let you eat sugary things, and for a few glorious days you could abdicate responsibility for being a grown up. It had been more than a decade since Gunn had been mothered by anyone. Longer than that for Wesley. His father hadn’t felt his mother had the right to get too involved in her only child’s upbringing. Wesley was going to be a Watcher and therefore his training was the responsibility of his father; his mother’s kind-hearted interventions invariably dismissed as ‘interference’. Trish and Roger still didn’t know about Illyria, of course. He’d tried to call them after Fred’s death, he really had, but there were some messages you couldn’t leave on an answerphone and it had been such agony to psych himself up to it once that when he’d hit the anticlimax of that whirring machine, he’d given up and backed away. Then on their visit Illyria had made it impossible for him to deliver the news that their only daughter was dead. Another kind lie. It must have hurt her, Illyria, his grief. If she really was infected by Fred’s humanity then his grief must be like a salt burn on an open wound to her. He wondered if she could comprehend guilt, or if she was incapable of identifying it as guilt but felt it anyway.

He touched the walls, not sure if it was a good thing or not that he couldn’t see all those pictures and equations Fred had made. He felt an irrational desire to try to find them again but that would only be the probing of a wound he really needed to give some time to heal.

“‘Handsome man saved me from the monsters’.”

Wesley turned around to find Angel looking as stricken as he felt as he gazed around at the room.

“It wasn’t your fault, Angel.” Wesley straightened up. “What happened to Fred, what happened to Cordelia. None of it was your fault.”

“It happened because of me. All of it.” Angel turned a slow circle.

“Free will,” Wesley countered. “Cordelia chose to ascend. Fred chose to go to Wolfram & Hart. We all did.”

“I’m not sure that you did. I’m not sure how much was your decision and how much was the mind wipe the Senior Partners performed on you.”

Wesley thought back to the standing in that room with all those records, thinking wearily that if they just walked away from this they would always wonder if they could have done more good by staying. “I think we would have all made that decision come what may. It offered the chance to make a difference and we were so tired of taking one step forward and four steps back in the fight against evil.”

“Lorne said that I pulled us all off our paths when I slept with Darla.”

Wesley shrugged. “If you hadn’t done that, Connor wouldn’t exist, and I think we both know he’s going to do great good one day.”

Angel came forward with an odd look on his face. “You really do believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Wesley glanced at him in mild surprise. “Don’t you?”

Angel shrugged. “He did terrible harm before, Wes. Kind of what you’d expect from my son, really, isn’t it? But I always felt there was good in him. Knew there was good in him.”

“There is. And perhaps remembering what he did in the past may be the spur he needs to stay on his path this time.”

Angel reached out to touch the wall, in the place where there had been that picture of him and Fred on the horse. “I was supposed to be the hero in Fred’s story. The one who brought her home and kept her safe. Instead I took her into another hell. It just came with a nice shiny laboratory and necro-tempered glass.”

Wesley looked at the walls which he remembered being green, now painted the pale pinkish shade Fred’s mother had chosen, remembered how it looked; those repeated phrases and the mathematical equations. ‘ _If you could square your thoughts could you cube your problems?’, ‘Listen, listen, listen…’_ He remembered Fred shaking her head in that bus station: “ _I got lost. I got lost, and they did terrible things to me, but, but it was just a storybook. It was just a story with monsters, not real.… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I got so lost.”_ Her mother wrapping her into that embrace that Wesley had never known, telling her it didn’t matter what they’d done, they were going to make it all right.

“I’m sorry too, Fred.” Wesley leant his head against the wall in the place where there had been an equation he’d never understood. “I’m sorry you got so lost.”

He felt hands on his shoulders tentatively rubbing his back and turned to find a blurry Gunn with tears in his brown eyes. The man said hoarsely: “Better though, right? To have known her?”

Wesley managed a smile although he realized now that he had evidently been crying as well. “Much better.” Seeing the look in Gunn’s eyes, he gripped his arm. “It wasn’t your fault. I blamed you because I had to have someone to blame, but I was wrong. You signed a piece of paper.”

“That’s what I told him,” Angel put in.

“I knew there would be consequences. I knew someone would pay.”

Wesley sighed. “What was it Faith said to Connor? That just makes you one of us? We’re here because we’re not perfect, because we make mistakes, because we’ve done things we can never take back.”

Gunn nodded, looking across at Angel. “Must be contagious. Hang around with Angel for any length of time and you become as big a screw up as he is.”

Wesley managed a faint smile. “Isn’t that actually in the job description? I thought it was in our terms of employment?”

“Like that cheap bastard would ever give us a proper contract.” Gunn rubbed Wesley’s shoulders again gently. It was always gentle when Gunn touched him. He could never decide which he preferred, that solid pressure from Angel that told him everything was okay, or that tender contact from Gunn that told him he was fragile and cherished.

“Hey…” Angel looked hurt. “I’m not cheap. I’m just…old. They didn’t have terms of employment in my day.”

“This is your day, Angel,” Wesley reminded him.

Gunn was still gently touching him and he knew that as an Englishman and his father’s son he should quietly withdraw from that contact but it was comforting and he didn’t want to and his father wasn’t here anyway to see and disapprove of someone touching him with kindness.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” Gunn added. “Losing Fred.”

“I wasn’t alone.” Wesley looked around the room again, remembering everything, leaving tacos outside and watching her collect them and Fred wearing those glasses that didn’t suit her at all and yet which somehow looked so wonderful on her, telling them she was fine, really. “Fred was with me.”

Gunn grimaced. “I mean…after… I thought afterwards that we knew what was happening, we knew it was something old and evil hollowing Fred out and we just left you alone with her – with it. I was just thinking you should have all the time you could with Fred but then later… I should have been there after.”

“Illyria was.” Wesley took a last look around the room. He knew there were still some of her clothes in here; more probably in the room she’d shared with Gunn. And Gunn had his own guilt at having let her down, his own grief, his own painful memories of their time in this hotel, and he’d come back here and faced it. “That was one thing, at least. I was never alone with Fred’s…corpse. She passed out of this life and Illyria stepped into it. At the time that seemed uniquely terrible but now I find it strangely comforting.”

Gunn nodded. “I never expected her to stick around after you and Angel disappeared into that other world, but she stayed with us, with me and Spike, came back here and never talked about leaving, just about ways to get you back, how it couldn’t be permitted for you to stay in another dimension. She got very frustrated by not being able to just step into that world and grab you back. A lot of stamping her dainty blue feet about no longer having the power of a god. But she worked with us. She never even talked about going somewhere else. I think in her own way she’s scared of this world.”

“Yes, I think it terrifies her.” Wesley reached out and touched the wall in temporary farewell. “And I think Fred’s humanity is in there somewhere. A spark of it. Perhaps her soul as well. Illyria lost her army of doom and her worlds of wonder and now we’re all she has left, and she’s all we have left of Fred.”

Angel sighed. “Still don’t like her.”

“She’s an asset, Angel. A warrior on the side of good.”

“But _she_ isn’t good.” 

“She doesn’t understand our world or our morality yet, but she’s still doing good by being with us.”

Angel rolled his eyes, and there was something definitely sulky about the set of his shoulders. “I think I liked you better when you were crazy.”

“We’re the only family she has, Angel.” Wesley looked at the place where that drawing of Fred and Angel on the horse had been. “And in her way I think she’s as lost and in need of a family as Fred was on Pylea.”

Angel shook his head. “Great rescue that turned out to be. Save her from the monsters only to deliver her into hell.”

“Fred was glad to come back – even if only for a few years. I think if you’d asked her she would have told you she’d still want the rescue. She didn’t wish she’d never come back to this world when she was…dying, she just wondered why she couldn’t stay.” He turned to Gunn. “Who’s Feigenbaum?”

“That tatty old rabbit of hers. Why?”

Wesley gazed at him for a moment. “I just… Why didn’t we talk to each other more when we were in that place?”

“Wolfram & Hart?” Angel grimaced. “I keep wondering that myself – how much did they manipulate us and how much did we do it to ourselves. Every time I tried to talk to you I came up against that damned mindwipe, what I’d done to you, the things you didn’t remember. I hated putting that look on your face. Like your head hurt and you didn’t know why you didn’t understand what I was talking about.”

“I was so lonely all the time I was there. I hated it so much.” Wesley turned to Gunn: “You seemed happy. I couldn’t talk to you about it.”

Gunn shrugged. “I was happy. I felt as if I was really doing some good. Like I knew who I was and where I was meant to be for the first time in my life. I remember wishing you’d lighten up and enjoy all the books. At least Fred and Lorne seemed to be having fun…”

“I think that place nearly got all our souls.” Angel also touched the wall in farewell. “I could feel it sucking all the hope right out of me. Like what was the point of anything when it was all going to be there the next day and the next day, the Senior Partners and their slow burning apocalypse, and the elevators rising and falling, and the damned paperclips. It should have told us right then that place was Hell Incorporated, when they could take every employee being slaughtered by a fiery lava beast and just…shrug it off and remake themselves as good as new a few weeks later. I was supposed to be a champion of humanity, but they put me in charge of people I despised, who I didn’t even see as human half the time.”

Wesley grimaced. “I shot someone in the kneecap. I still can’t believe I did that. Does anyone know if he was given any kind of medical care?”

Gunn nodded. “Wolfram & Hart employees have excellent medical benefits. There would have been an automatic repair job done.”

“I tried to treat them as if they were decent ordinary people but I couldn’t get past the fact they worked for Wolfram & Hart. The fact they were alive when Lilah wasn’t…” Wesley winced. “I didn’t even know I felt like that until this minute.”

“I sent that guy to see Magnus Bryce and I didn’t really care that he came back in a bucket. I was annoyed about the affront to my corporate dignity but it didn’t…bother me. I didn’t lie awake thinking that a human being was dead because of something I’d done. I don’t even remember his name.”

“Neither do I.” Wesley tried to recall it and then winced. “I’m just hearing Harmony talking about ‘bucket o’ lawyer’.”

“As a corporate sell-out, I was way too good.” Angel backed out of the room. 

Gunn said, “I remember a guy telling me that the thing about atonement is, you never run out of chances.”

“It’s starting to feel like every time I crawl a few inches up the greasy pole towards redemption, I fall another foot further down straight afterwards.”

Wesley patted him gently on the shoulder. “Just try not to eat anyone, shut anyone in a room with murderous vampires, or wipe anyone’s memories for a few years, Angel. You’ll climb back up again.”

Angel narrowed his eyes. “I definitely preferred you when you were crazy.”

Gunn shrugged. “He’s baiting the cranky bloodsucker, Angel, do you really think that’s sane?”

Wesley grimaced apologetically. “I did thank you for saving me in that hell dimension, didn’t I? And the hand-holding and not leaving me when I had an unexploded bomb inside me, and the…comforting me when I was having nightmares? The comforting of which I’m trusting that no one has any Polaroids…?”

“So, you _don’t_ want me sending out the picture of you naked in bed with a vampire on all my Christmas cards this year, then? Because I was thinking that brotherhood of man would be a good theme….”

“Angel….” Wesley gave him a reproachful look.

Gunn winced and made the sign of the cross. “Sheesh, Wes, you ought to register those eyes as an offensive weapon. Just don’t tell me I have to burn my naked-Watcher-in-bed-with-naked-Vampire photos because they’re really the heart of my blackmail collection.”

“You didn’t really take photographs, did you?” Wesley’s confidence faded a little at the look of ‘why wouldn’t we?’ surprise on Angel and Gunn’s faces. “I mean, why would anyone do something like that? Unless they were fiends from the innermost pit of hell.”

“Well, I was kind of a fiend,” Angel said thoughtfully as he led the way downstairs. “And I’ve visited _a_ hell. So, there may have been a time delayed photo or two, not to mention some sketching. Just as a keepsake.”

“Me too. Two weeks in a hell dimension getting my heart cut out.” Gunn shrugged. “That does stuff to a guy. Makes him harder. But not in an in-bed-with-a-Watcher way.”

“I’m an _ex_ Watcher,” Wesley retorted. “And just because in some strange alternate dimension used as a demon conjuring trick on poor Cordelia I may have been unwise enough to decide that any port in a storm –” As Angel and Gunn both gawped at him Wesley had a sudden mental image of himself as someone in a muddy hole who could not seem to stop shovelling. “You know, I never actually said that. It’s the echo in here.”

Angel waved a hand between him and Gunn. “So, which port are we talking about here. Oh right, I was _insane_ , wasn’t I? So, presumably it had to be…Gunn.”

Gunn annoyed Wesley by failing to shy like a nervous horse before quickly changing the subject, as he had always been taught was the proper masculine response to such a situation, but instead looked smug. “So, I was doing the one-armed version of you, eh? Damn, I bet I was good. You know that could be the real reason you looked so wrecked. Nothing to do with the strain of looking after Angel, at all – just trying to keep up with me in bed.”

“You have no shame,” Wesley observed. “What happened to men stuttering inanely before talking about sporting events or the weather in loud carrying voices whenever something like this is suggested?”

“Cordy should have shared.” 

“Yes, because it’s not as if you would have been insufferable about it or anything.”

“Hey, we both know I would have been the best sex you’ve ever had, English.”

“You are so unbelievably full of yourself!” 

Angel shook his head. “I can’t believe you two were having sex while I was insane. That’s just…tacky.”

“We weren’t…” Wesley broke off. “Why am I having anything to do with this conversation? That world never even existed. It was a lie told by Skip to manipulate Cordelia.”

“Gotta wonder why Skip saw you as the gets-laid-by-Gunn type though.” 

Gunn shrugged. “He probably read that from Cordy and she would have known that I was irresistible in any world, and Wes is just really…easy.”

“Perhaps I seduced Gunn with my suave wit and sophistication?” Wesley countered.

Gunn snorted and patted him – still gently – on the shoulder. “Yeah, Wes, you keep telling yourself that. There could even be _one_ dimension out there out of all those infinite possibilities where that might even have happened. I so seduced you. I probably saved your skinny one-armed ass from some skanky demon and then taught you everything you ever knew.”

“From the sound of things, I was actually the one in charge.”

“Outside the bedroom maybe, inside – never.”

Wesley looked around the lobby and realized that everyone was staring at them in rather wide-eyed confusion.

Angel grimaced. “Oh, Gunn and Wes didn’t actually turn gay upstairs or anything –”

Gunn looked a little discomfited. “We were just talking about other dimensions –”

“Positing possibilities,” Wesley added hastily.

“In this other dimension Cordelia visited where I was crazy with the visions, Gunn and Wes were…an item,” Angel explained to Buffy.

Willow raised an eyebrow. “Oh, in another dimension Cordelia visited Xander and I were skanky evil vampires and did skanky evil vampire things. I never think those other dimensions have much bearing on ours except that it turned out I was kind of gay after all and actually Xander and I did have that brief thing with the touching and the formal wear and the –”

“You could stop talking any time now, Willow,” said Wesley with a fixed smile on his face. “Really.”

She looked hurt. “When you were crazy you really liked my hair _and_ you thought I was pretty.”

“I still like your hair and I think you’re extremely pretty, it’s just been a long day, I’m hungry, and I don’t want to have to get drunk and have sex with Gunn. I’d really much rather eat that delicious food that Buffy has been cooking all day.”

“You prefer food to me?”

“Gunn, can you get off the insanely alpha male ego-trip for just a few minutes and acknowledge that if it were a choice between having sex with me or eating a burrito of even moderate quality, the burrito would win by a landslide?”

Gunn thought about it for a moment and then inclined his head in reluctant acknowledgment. “Okay. But… Hey, next time Buffy goes into Martha Stewart mode can we get her to make burritos…?” And then everyone started to realize how hungry they were and the moment had – thankfully – passed.

Wesley shook his head. “I think I must have gone insane in self-defence.”

“Do you hate me now?”

He turned in surprise to find Illyria gazing at him with her head on one side and something that definitely looked like fear of rejection in her pale blue eyes.

“No. Why would you think…?”

“The Burkle creature. You blame me for her death and now you are visiting places where you knew her.”

“That’s what we do, with people that we love, Illyria, we like to remember them.”

“Why do something that brings you grief?”

“Because it’s part of being alive and the people that one loves are part of us, alive or dead, they helped make us what we are.” He looked around the room, seeing them all: Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Connor, Spike, Illyria. “Just as everyone here has helped make me what I am today.”

Illyria walked around him with a frown, head tilting to the other side as she contemplated him thoughtfully. “Are you not generally considered undernourished and mentally unstable?”

“Hey…” Gunn put an arm around Wesley’s shoulders. “We put him together from a ‘Make your own skinny crazy English guy’ kit. They’re meant to look like this.”

Wesley looked down at himself. “Are you completely sure you read the instructions correctly, Charles?”

Gunn removed the arm from his shoulders but gave him a last pat and Wesley wondered if Gunn had ever touched him so much or so often; then remembered he had been like this after the gunshot wound. “Well, they were in Korean, so we had to wing it, but, I think we got it more or less right.”

Seeing Angel peering at his shoulder, Wesley sighed. “You want to see it again, don’t you?”

“No.” Angel waved a dismissive hand then got that hopeful look on his face that made him look about fourteen and a complete dork. “Can I?”

Sighing again, Wesley unbuttoned his shirt and flipped it off his right shoulder so Angel could peer at the brand. Gunn and Illyria also looked at it with interest as Xander put a hand written menu in Wesley’s hands.

“Time to take your seat in the dining room, Wesley, and oh yes, you people are sick.”

Angel pulled Wesley’s shirt back up to cover the brand. “Just checking he’s still…legally…”

“Yours?” Xander patted him on the shoulder. “Make sure you drink a lot of that wine, Wesley. He so owes you.”

The scent of food was delicious and Wesley thought of how excited Fred and Cordelia would have been at the thought of a proper meal in the dining room. “The dead are always with us, Illyria.” He looked between her and Angel. “Some of them in a more literal way than others.”

Angel plucked the menu from him. “Fine, pick on the dead guy. I tried to get Buffy to just make steak and kidney pie. Sometimes I feel like something from back in the day.”

“A virgin gypsy to go?” Xander suggested. “Can you get those as takeout?”

Angel looked at Xander levelly. “I also killed men. Tortured them too. Especially the really annoying ones…”

Wesley and Gunn exchanged a glance and then both edged back a pace. Gunn coughed. “Greasy pole, remember…?”

Angel looked sulky. “That’s the real reason people don’t stick with their atonement, you know, they’re never allowed to have any fun.”

“Willow and I made place settings.” Buffy held up napkins folded into intricate shapes which almost resembled birds and animals, although not very much. As they all looked at her blankly, she pointed to the office. “There was a book on it.”

There was a moment of confusion before everyone turned to Wesley. “I don’t have a book on napkin folding,” he insisted. “It must have been Cordelia’s.”

“It’s on home entertaining.” Buffy gazed at her folded napkins proudly. “Isn’t this swan cool?”

“We could decorate the candle holders too, if we had more time.” Willow held up the book to show them an illustration. 

They all peered at it and Xander wrinkled his nose. “Is it me or is that completely…?”

“Hideous,” Angel confirmed.

Wesley put his head on one side to examine the picture better. “Why would anyone want to do that to an inoffensive candlestick?”

“If you two have quite finished going all…Stepford wife, kittens, some of us really want to eat that delicious-smelling food before it gets cold.” Lorne took the menu from Angel and straightened it. “And Buffy made me write this out by hand. Don’t crease it.”

It was impossible to walk towards the dining room without looking around for Fred and Cordelia, imagining Cordelia looking like a million dollars and critiquing Buffy’s choice of footwear while Fred’s beauty outshone every candle as she amazed the visitors from Sunnydale with her ability to eat more than her own weight in food.

He had to take a moment by himself while the sound of other people’s voices broke over him to breathe around the pain of her truly being gone and never coming back, then opened his eyes to find Gunn looking how he felt. It struck him again that Gunn had lost as much as he had done; he had shared more meals with Fred; had breakfast with her more times; in some ways had probably known her better. To Wesley she had always been enchanting exactly as she was; he had never felt he needed to know more about her, because it seemed to him that everything he knew was just another strand in her perfection. He had thought Gunn was guiltless of needing her to remain an ideal but ironically it was Wesley who had felt no lessening of what Lilah called his ‘schoolgirl crush’, and which he thought of as his great love, when Fred had come to ask for his help in murdering a man who had wronged her. Gunn was the one who had stepped off the pedestal on which Fred had unknowingly placed him to save the woman he loved from becoming a murderer. Or had that been to stop him from being in love with a murderer? Either way it had undermined the foundations of their relationship. And Wesley had done his part in chipping away at that crumbling edifice as well. He had been petty, perhaps, hurt and angry because Gunn’s friendship hadn’t been unconditional, after all. He looked across at the man and they exchanged a look of shared pain. It was there in Gunn’s eyes as well. _They’re really not coming back, are they_? Cordy and Fred. They had been here, dammit, close enough to touch. They had walked across this lobby wearing those dresses, looking like a million dollars, Connor asleep upstairs in his cot, and the world had been something that lay ahead of all of them, the demon hunters who occasionally took the night off from helping Angel with his mythic destiny to partake in a little culture and relaxation. He had liked that life. He missed that life.

“Wesley…?” 

He turned his head and there was Connor. Not a baby. Full grown and sane and well and looking at him in concern. The boy touched his arm gently. “Are you okay?”

Wesley looked around the hotel, stairs they had walked down, floor they had crossed, Cordelia spinning on that chair doing her impression of Angel, Fred hiding under that table, Cordelia holding that ice bag to the back of his head, Fred rushing back in to save them from the bug demons with one deft slice of her incredibly dangerous decapitating device, Cordelia leaving plastic flowers to lighten Angel’s gloomy basement, Fred rocking Connor in her arms looking so beautiful he could hardly catch his breath; and him, another version of himself, with an axe and murder on his mind, and her words to him: _“It wasn’t something in you, Wesley. It was something that was done to you…. You’re a good man….”_

He focused on Connor’s concerned kind face, those eyes so like Darla’s. “Yes. I’m just….”

“He is remembering Fred.” Illyria sounded so tragic.

“They’re good memories, Illyria,” Wesley told her gently. “Memories I’m grateful to have back. And I’m remembering Cordy, as well. And everyone else. That’s what we do when we have friends we love. We like to think about them, to remember them and be glad we knew them, even when they’re gone.”

Xander nodded. “I still think about Anya. Sometimes they’re happy memories and sometimes they’re not. Still wouldn’t want to be without them.”

“Memories of the people we’ve lost also help us to be grateful for the people we have left.” Wesley looked at Angel and Gunn and Lorne and Connor and Spike and then smiled gently at Illyria. “You would count as one of those.”

She gazed at him for a moment in non-comprehension and then realized and smiled in a very human way before she collected herself and turned away. “I am indifferent to such human emotions.”

“Lucky that,” Spike grinned at Wesley. “Terrible thing when demons go all humanized. Right, Peaches?”

Angel glowered at him. “Don’t call me that.”

Giles came out of the office. “Just so you know – Buffy and Willow _have_ made a seating plan.”

Angel, Wesley and Gunn exchanged a glance. Angel murmured, “Are you a little scared that if Illyria starts trying to act like a human woman her role models are going to be an insane astrophysicist, a Slayer with Martha Stewart tendencies, a kooky witch, and…Cordelia?”

“No,” Gunn assured him. “I’m terrified.”

They all looked across at Illyria as Connor and Giles headed out of the door. Worryingly, she was examining what appeared to be a napkin folded in the shape of a swan with close attention.

“Be afraid,” Spike murmured. “Be very afraid.”

***

They ate in the dining room. Even though as Xander told them, they were just tempting fate, Buffy was adamant that this time they were going to have a nice dinner with proper napkins and no elbows on the table. They would follow her and Willow’s seating plan _exactly_ , and, yes, that meant all of them. And no, she didn’t think it was unreasonable to send Spike upstairs to change his shirt or to order Wesley to comb his hair.

Angel heard Gunn murmur to Wesley: “Hands up anyone who thinks there are worse things than it just being guys and demons here?”

Wesley surreptitiously lifted his fingers – sensibly, he wasn’t going to rashly raise an entire visible hand – while Spike and Angel did the same thing. Gunn cleared his throat: “So, I guess you guys are going to have to head back to Cleveland before too long…?”

Buffy looked surprised. “Not really. That’s pretty much Faith’s particular Hellmouth headache now. Dawn’s doing the Watcher thing for her. Kennedy is helping her out with the demon slaying and Wood has the looking tall, dark, and handsome pretty much covered.”

Spike snorted sulkily. “I don’t think Wood is handsome. Okay, tall, yes, but I don’t see handsome.”

Buffy sucked the gravy from a piece of asparagus in a way that was downright provocative. “Trust me, he really is.”

“I dislike him already.” Angel was never going to be okay about Buffy liking other guys. He could make the self-sacrificing gesture, wish for a better life for her, but not be jealous of other men she liked…never.

“He did want to kill Spike,” Giles poured Wesley and himself another glass of wine.

Angel shrugged. “Well, maybe he’s not so bad.”

“Faith certainly thinks so,” Xander put in. 

“Yes, and if you don’t actually beg her to stop she’ll tell you why, too,” Willow put in. “With details.”

Buffy looked intrigued. “Really? Anything particularly interesting or you know…sick and wrong?”

“Apparently, he’s really inventive when it comes to…” Willow seemed to become aware of the disapproving glances every man at the table was sending in her direction and grimaced at Buffy. “I’ll tell you later.”

“I would also like to hear this tale,” Illyria observed. “It intrigues me.”

Buffy frowned. “You don’t think Kennedy kisses and tells as well, do you?”

“God, I hope so,” Xander said with feeling. He became aware of Willow’s expression. “Did I just say that out loud?”

Gunn quietly removed the bottle from its place next to Xander’s elbow and handed it to Spike. “So, no urgent reason for you to be leaving any time soon then?”

“Nope.” Buffy beamed at him. “We’re fine helping you guys out.”

Angel saw Gunn and Wesley exchange less than enthused looks. One could see that it had been too long since they’d had Cordelia around to educate them out of their No Gurls Allowed mentality.

Spike seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Maybe you could fix Wes and Gunn up with some Slayers?” he suggested. “It’s time those two got back to dating.”

Connor looked up with interest. “I’d like to meet some more Slayers.”

“Oh, we should introduce Connor to Dawn,” Willow beamed. “I’m sure they’d get along.” As Angel and Buffy both glared at her, Willow blinked in confusion. “What did I say?”

“I want Dawn to date normal boys,” Buffy insisted, glancing across at Connor. “No offence.”

“You’re saying my son isn’t normal?” Angel demanded.

“Oh, dear lord,” Giles murmured. 

“I’m not saying he’s _abnormal_ – I’m just saying that given Dawn’s origins maybe it would be a good idea if she went out with guys who weren’t so much…the son of two vampires with a false set of memories in his head of having a completely different background, that’s all.”

“Oh, and being a ball of green energy transformed into human form makes someone too good to go out with the son of a vampire…?”

“Dad…” Connor held his gaze. “It’s fine.”

Buffy grimaced. “Connor, I didn’t mean… I really didn’t… It’s just….”

Connor held up a hand. “Buffy, chill. I get where you’re coming from so don’t sweat it. And Dawn and I are already emailing anyway.”

“You’re what…?” Buffy demanded.

“Having super heroes for relatives means you have to vent sometimes. We’re being each other’s support group.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How supportive exactly?”

He gave her an innocent smile. “That’s for us to know and you to lose sleep over.”

Buffy turned to the vampire. “Angel!”

He shrugged. “Hey, teenagers, what can you do?” But the glance he sent in the direction of a smug-looking Connor was in no way critical.

“I was thinking like a triple blind date,” Spike continued unperturbed. “You put three Slayers into the pot and I put up Wes, Gunn and myself.”

Giles poured himself another glass of wine. “The girls aren’t gambling chips, Spike, and I think it’s highly unlikely that any Slayer in her right mind is going to date a vampire, with or without a soul.”

Buffy turned to look at him. “What was that about ‘any Slayer in her right mind?’”

Giles grimaced. “Well, clearly, what I really meant was…” He thought for a moment and then shrugged. “No, actually, I’ve got nothing.”

“What about me, Gunn and Wesley?” Xander suggested. “We could date Slayers.”

Wesley grimaced, suggesting that along with all his other memories the ones of him being tortured by Faith had also put in an appearance. “I think I’d rather not. In my experience they can be somewhat…volatile.”

“I also think this has strategy has no merit,” Illyria insisted. “It would not be fitting for Wesley to indulge in sexual intercourse so soon after losing his memories of himself.”

“Not all Slayers tie you up and smack you around, Wes,” Angel pointed out gently.

Spike looked surprised. “They don’t?”

Angel thought back to himself chained up in the mansion and he and Buffy exchanging blows in LA. “Well… not all the time.”

“Nevertheless, I think I’ll pass.” Wesley forced a smile. 

Gunn shrugged. “I’m up for it.” He turned to Xander. “You?”

He nodded. “Sure. Although…”

“What?”

“Well, out of the Slayers I’ve had sex with a hundred percent of them have tried to kill me later.”

Wesley inclined his head. “I think there is something to be said for the theory that Parkinson put forward that they’re inherently unbalanced.”

Giles looked thoughtful. “Oh yes, that was a fascinating paper on the likelihood of demonic strength being linked to mental instability. I remember reading it in the old Council library. Their view seemed to be that it’s actually impossible for a Slayer to…” 

“I’m sitting right here,” Buffy said indignantly. 

Catching Buffy’s eye he coughed. “Of course, as I recall, that particular study was discredited by later research.”

“Absolutely,” Wesley said hastily. 

Spike went to light a cigarette and at a look from Angel unwillingly put it away. “I dunno – I’ve met five fully-fledged Slayers in my time and every single one of them has tried to kill me.”

“Perhaps because you were trying to kill _her_?” Buffy said witheringly.

“Or it could have been that time of the month?” Spike suggested.

Angel gazed at Buffy. “Now do you see what I have to put up with?”

“And the puppy dog eyes strike again,” Lorne murmured. “Two hundred and fifty years Sir Broodsalot has been walking the earth and he still thinks that’s the best way to get around the fairer…” Seeing Buffy’s melting expression as she gazed into Angel’s brown eyes, Lorne picked up his glass. “And it turns out, he’s right.”

Angel picked up his glass and gazed down the table, abruptly overwhelmed by a wave of déjà vu. Buffy was the one who had set the places, not him, and yet, by chance, she had mirrored the seating arrangements of his unconscious mind. Angel was at the head of the table, with Connor on his left, but in place of Cordelia was Buffy, although with her short blonde hair, there was enough of a fleeting resemblance that he thought for an instant that perhaps none of it had happened and this was his hallucinatory fantasy once more. He was almost afraid to look, one part of him so desperate to see Cordelia again, the other terrified that this was just a dream and he was still trapped beneath the ocean, his son still full of hatred for him. Buffy smiled back at him gently and there was a mingled stab of relief and loss. 

Next to Buffy was Gunn, but in Fred’s place, there was now Illyria who was trying to mimic their eating behaviour despite clearly thinking the act of cutting up food and placing it into one’s mouth was very strange. Her resemblance to Fred was strong enough to be painful but there could hardly have been more of a contrast to Fred’s healthy appetite. Yet, as he looked at her, he saw her dart a glance at Wesley to see how he was using his knife and fork, and subtly altered her own grip upon them, something in her brief insecurity that touched even him. Willow was sitting between Connor and Xander, her hair a blaze of glorious warmth, further proof that this was no hallucination. When she smiled across at Buffy, she could have been the schoolgirl he remembered, and when Buffy grinned back he saw the girl he had first met in Sunnydale. Xander leaned across to whisper something in Willow’s ear and despite the eye patch, as he moved her hair away from her ear so he could murmur into it, he looked as mischievous as when he had been a teenager. Willow laughed and then shook a finger at him in mock reproach. Lorne firmly passed on the plate of roast potatoes which Spike had been hogging, earning an eye roll in the process. 

Wesley was seated next to Illyria, unobtrusively helping her with the complicated business of sipping wine and eating the dish she was sniffing so suspiciously. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and he looked older and a lot wearier than he had in Angel’s fantasy, but he was alive and well, and very much himself. At the end of the table, where Wesley had sat in his fantasy, was Giles, with more grey around the temples, but the same steady gaze, although it was now fixed on Wesley far more benevolently than it had ever been back in Sunnydale. When Giles’ gaze moved on to Buffy, he smiled with a flicker of parental pride that he would no doubt have tried to conceal if she had been looking his way. By chance Buffy looked up from her meal at that moment and smiled back at him as Giles held up his glass to her in acknowledgement of her cooking skills.

“This is incredibly good,” Wesley told the girl as he looked up from his plate. “I can’t remember the last time I had a meal like this. You are full of hidden talents, Buffy.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah, thanks a lot, love.”

Buffy beamed at them. “You’re welcome. And as a special treat I’ll even let you all do the washing-up.”

Connor checked his watch and made a very poor showing of regret. “Darn, I’d love to stay and help but I promised I’d be home by midnight.”

“Why?” Buffy demanded. “Will you turn into a pumpkin?”

“You really are a chip off the old block, aren’t you?” Spike observed.

Angel was very conscious of the faces that weren’t here, the places where Fred and Cordelia should have been. He knew Gunn and Wesley were thinking of them, too, a glance exchanged as they passed food to one another around Illyria, a moment of shared acknowledgement of shared loss. Not for the first time, Angel wondered if Cordelia was looking down on them from that higher plane of hers. Maybe the first time she’d been lured up there it had been a trick, but she’d earned the right to sit amongst the Powers and he liked to think that was where she was now; a benevolent spirit watching over them.

He looked around the table again, and thought how incredible it was that they were all here like this, like living archaeological remnants of the different strata of his life: Spike, only sane and present remnant of his vampire family; Buffy, Giles, Willow, and Xander, all miraculously alive and in more or less one piece, despite seven years on a Hellmouth, And the survivors of his third family. He had lost Doyle, Cordelia, and Fred, but had somehow managed to hang onto Wesley, Gunn, and Lorne. And even Illyria was starting to grow on him. She was certainly useful in a fight and for all her many faults she was fond of Wesley.

Angel poured himself a glass of wine and held it up. “To family,” he said.

There was a pause before everyone else followed suit, and then the wine was glowing red as life itself as the crystal shone in the candlelight and every glass was raised. And just as in his fantasy, Wesley returned his smile and said quietly: “To family.”

##### The End

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: ANGEL and its characters is the property of Joss Whedon (Mutant Enemy), David Greenwalt (LazyDave), Fox, and the WB network. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.


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